Resurgam
by ophelia8
Summary: Something very angry is haunting a tiny graveyard on the Vineyard.
1. Default Chapter

Title: Resurgam   
Author: Ophelia  
E-Mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com  
Rating: PG-13   
Spoilers: 7th Season, through "all things"  
Keywords: MSR  
Summary: Something very angry is haunting a tiny graveyard on the   
Vineyard.   
Archive: Anywhere you want. Just let me know where you're putting   
it.  
  
*****************************************************************  
Disclaimer: Sing to "All Things Bright and Beautiful:" "All   
things dark and horrible, each hidden evil plot, all things weird   
and miserable, Chris Carter owns the lot. Aaaaaa-men."  
  
*****************************************************************  
  
After a hundred years  
Nobody knows the place,--  
Agony, that enacted there,  
Motionless as peace.  
--Emily Dickinson, J. 1147 ("The Forgotten Grave")  
  
The first question Scully had about the South Road Ghost was   
whether to classify it as a revenge or reenactment haunting.   
After seven years of working with Mulder's eccentric   
record-keeping system, this no longer seemed a strange question   
to ask. She scanned the one-page fax while sipping her morning   
coffee, making small notations in the margins with a red pen.   
  
The fax had apparently come from a private citizen, a man named   
Irv Stuckey who wrote with an old typewriter ribbon and couldn't   
spell. He complained at some length about how no one at the FBI   
or his local sheriff's office took him seriously or answered his   
letters. Great. This kind of case was a nightmare to sell   
upstairs. Scully wrote at the bottom, "Jurisdiction?"   
  
The relevant part of the letter read:  
  
This aftrenoon at apprx. 3 pm Kristie Herron was found dead at   
foot of Wesquobsque Cliffs of a brken neck. As you know the   
South Road gohst does haunt these clifts and you know what for.   
Kristie had all the marks encluding knife cuts on her hands and   
leg & it was the right kind of night very cold & windy.   
  
If you do the kind of work J. Luce, Jr. says you do and are not   
just wasting taxes you will come out and investegate the death of   
this poor girl. Even with what happend in Boston she deserves   
better then to die this way & her mother is very broken up. My   
ph. # is the same as the last letter I sent but since you   
proabably threw it out here it is again 963-0545.   
  
Sincereley,  
Irv Stuckey  
  
It wasn't the weirdest or most illiterate letter Scully had   
received while working on the X-Files, and she didn't let its   
eccentricities distract her. Irv's description of Kristie's   
wounds intrigued her particularly. He didn't seem to be   
a family member and he certainly wasn't a pathologist. Where   
had he gotten his information? She drew an arrow from his   
comment about knife cuts to the bottom of the page, where she   
noted sarcastically, "Clearly, falling over a cliff precludes   
the possibility these cuts were due to natural causes."   
  
She tapped her pen cap against the former break-room table that   
served as her desk. Her options were to dismiss Irv's claims and   
round-file the letter, or accept the case and write it up as some   
kind of paranormal event. For years she'd left this duty to   
Mulder on general principles, but eventually her protests against   
his bookkeeping methods began to feel childish, and now she wrote  
cases up herself.  
  
Should she go with reenactment haunting or revenge? Irv had   
hinted that the ghost's appearance was recurrent, which any good   
paranormal investigator knew was typical of the reenactment type.   
And yet there were the supposed knife wounds to think of.   
  
Only Mulder would come up with a system that classified   
paranormal phenomena by motive. //Fine -- eenie, meenie,   
miney, moe . . . Revenge haunting it is.// Scully wrote the new   
case number across the top of the letter, "X-00-300.17-01."   
The first vengeful ghost of the year 2000.   
  
At that moment the door to the office opened and Mulder came in,   
sipping coffee from his MUFON mug. "'Morning," he said.   
  
"Good morning," she responded. Though their words were   
restrained and their manner professional, their gazes met   
and held too long for mere courtesy.   
  
The familiar electrifying feeling began to build, and soon   
Scully looked away. The Hoover Building had not been a   
friendly place for her in some time, and she felt too exposed   
when she allowed herself to experience powerful emotions   
while on the job.  
  
The gossip about her and Mulder was nothing new, of course,   
except that now some of it was true. Worse, the rumors   
were circulated with a barely-veiled hostility that made   
them more than just embarrassing. They were offensively   
intimate, like a dirty stranger peering in at the window.   
Lately she'd taken to saving up her photocopying until the very   
end of the day, when the copy room was likely to be deserted.  
  
Holding out Irv Stuckey's fax, Scully said, "This came in early   
this morning -- a report of an unexplained death. I've just   
officially made it a revenge haunting,"  
  
"Really. That's different." Mulder stood behind her -- too   
close for propriety, as usual -- and looked over her shoulder   
at the paper.   
  
She repressed the urge to elbow him for teasing her.  
Obliviousness to gossip was all very well for him -- Scully   
had previous experience with "discreet" romances, and knew   
popular opinion tended to be much harsher toward the woman.  
  
She persevered in her attempt to remain businesslike. "The   
fax's author is writing from a place called the Wesqobsque   
Cliffs, although I'd be lying if I said I knew where those   
were. He seems to know you."   
  
For some reason, that information took all the playfulness out   
of Mulder. "Wesqobsque?" he asked, taking the fax from her hand.  
  
"What?" she asked, turning to look up at him. A fine line had  
appeared between his brows -- a look of pain.   
  
"You all right?" she asked. Office protocol forgotten, she   
rested her hand on his arm.  
  
He did not meet her gaze as he edged out from behind her table   
and walked over to his desk. All intense focus now, Mulder set the   
fax down and began rifling through papers in a drawer. "Irv's a   
local crackpot -- most of his stories are worth their weight in crap.   
With luck, this one's as much garbage as the rest of them."   
  
She got up and followed him. "Mulder, I don't understand," she   
said.  
  
After a moment he stopped rummaging around and looked up at her.   
"I grew up near the Wesquobsque Cliffs. They run along the   
Vineyard's South Shore, from Chilmark to Aquinnah. The story   
of the South Road Ghost is just an old myth from that area,   
local color that plays well to kids and tourists. I doubt Irv   
even believes in it -- he's just using it for his own purposes."   
After that he went back to digging through the drawer   
again, cursing softly as he dropped handfuls of bent business   
cards and Post-It notes onto the blotter.   
  
"Did you know her? The girl who died?" Scully asked softly.   
  
He continued his search as he spoke. "A little -- just a   
little bit. Really I know her mother, or I used to. Patty Todd   
used to baby-sit us when we were little -- her mom was   
a friend of my mother's. Patty sent me a card when my dad   
died . . . " Frustrated, Mulder slammed the drawer back in the   
desk.  
  
In the violence of the gesture, Scully sensed how much he was   
still suffering over the recent loss of his mother, as well as his   
grief at learning the truth about what happened to Samantha. She  
reached out to him again, offering a steadying touch.  
  
Whether he noticed her outstretched hand or not, he knocked it   
Away while straightening up. "Jesus, Kristie died down there   
on the beach and Irv wants to blame it on the South Road Ghost?   
He's such a little shit."   
  
"Mulder, you want to tell me what's going on?" she asked. He   
still had the irritating tendency to draw her into his tortured inner   
monologues without quite acknowledging her presence.  
  
"Sorry," he murmured. Mulder dropped down into his chair and  
ran his fingers through his hair, as if trying to soothe himself.  
"I'm looking for Joey Luce's number at the Chilmark police   
station. If anybody knows what's going on, he should. I hope   
he'll tell me Irv's full of it."  
  
Still confused, Scully tried focusing on the basics. "So you're  
saying I shouldn't bother with this case. This isn't an X-File -  
- it's just some guy on Martha's Vineyard who likes to stir up   
trouble."   
  
Mulder sat back in his chair, as if forcibly relinquishing  
some inner tension. At last he looked up at her, and his   
expression was very sad. "I'm not saying you shouldn't bother.   
It's . . . complicated. The story of the South Road Ghost has   
a meaning -- there's a moral to it."  
  
Scully sat down on the edge of his desk, willing to listen.  
  
As she suspected, Mulder couldn't resist the chance to tell a   
good creepy story, even in his current distressed state.   
"Supposedly, the ghost is a widow named Mary Brown who was   
executed during the winter of 1778. That was a bad winter for   
the Island -- bad all around."  
  
"That was the winter George Washington spent at Valley Forge,"   
Scully said. Images from her childhood history books came to   
mind -- soldiers with black, gangrenous feet, shivering around   
the fire where they boiled shoe leather for food.  
  
Mulder nodded. "Boston didn't have enough naval power to defend   
the islands off the Cape, and the British had them under siege.   
There was a lot of hunger, a lot of disease. Mary Brown's   
husband went down with his whole crew in Nantucket Sound when he   
tried engaging a British war ship in his fishing boat." He   
must have seen Scully's look of amazement because he added, "They   
say the Vineyarders were brave on the water -- no one ever said   
they were smart.   
  
"After Captain Brown died, Mary gave birth to another baby and   
apparently something just snapped. She probably couldn't feed  
the kids and . . ." He seemed to be backing away from a too-  
accurate reconstruction of the woman's misery. "Anyway, she went   
nuts. Killed both her children with a kitchen knife and tried to   
cut her own throat."   
  
Mulder fell silent a moment. He rubbed the back of one hand with   
his thumb, as if trying to wear away something unpleasant about   
his boyhood home. "From our vantage point we can say, 'Oh, it was  
post-partum psychosis brought on by stress. Nowadays she might   
get off with manslaughter.' The Chilmark fathers didn't see it   
that way. The women of the town nursed her back to health and  
a few days after the new year, they hanged her. They say her   
ghost wanders the land along the South Shore with her head held   
up like a lantern. I guess the townswomen didn't do as good a   
job of healing her as they thought."   
  
Scully's medical training offered her a graphic image of the   
likely effects of hanging on a near-severed throat. "That would   
have been bad," she said.  
  
"It must have been. She's supposed to appear on cold, windy   
nights to women who've grievously wronged their own children.   
Some say she slashes the mothers up with the murder knife, and   
some say just looking at her drives guilty women mad, and they   
kill themselves. It's a Lovecraftian, inversion-of-the-natural-  
order sort of thing. Very Freud, very Brothers Grimm. The only   
problem is that there's nothing to the story. No one's ever   
found a record showing that Mary Brown even existed, and I've   
been over every inch of those woods along the South Shore --   
daytime, nighttime, summer, winter. The house I grew up in is   
about three-quarters of a mile from the South Road Burying   
Ground. There's nothing out there."  
  
"So Irv Stuckey is implying that Kristie Herron deserved to die   
because of something she did to harm her own child?" Scully   
asked. "You're right, he is a shit." She hoped that Irv's   
little theory hadn't made it back to Kristie's family. "Do you   
think that's what he meant by 'what happened in Boston' --   
something involving child abuse? Child neglect?"  
  
"I don't know what he meant by that," Mulder said. "As far as I   
know, Kristie didn't have any kids. It sure doesn't seem right  
that Patty's old enough to be a grandmother. Christ, that makes  
me feel ancient."  
  
"Don't remind me," Scully groaned. Only two months ago, she had   
spent her 36th birthday among a gaggle of relatives, most of them   
with sticky-fingered toddlers and baby carriers in tow. A cousin   
had managed to produce the first female Scully child in over 15   
years, a red-haired, blue-eyed baby named Emily Christine. The   
coloring was the predominant one for their family and the name   
a coincidence -- "Emily" was one of the top ten most popular   
girls' names in the country. And yet, the experience had called   
to mind with terrible sharpness the passage of time and what   
might have been.  
  
"You've got a long way to go before you're old, Red," Mulder   
said. He caught her little finger in his hand. Their relationship  
was still in flux, but there were moments of tenderness to anchor   
it, like stones at the edges of billowing fabric.   
  
At last, Mulder managed to find the much-bent card he was   
seeking, wedged in the cramped space where the drawer's side met   
the desk wall. He smoothed it out against the desk with the side   
of his hand, and Scully saw it read, "Sergeant Joseph A. Luce,   
Chilmark Police."   
  
Mulder dialed the phone, and after a moment began the   
introduction she'd heard a thousand times. "Good morning, this   
is Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI and I --" He didn't get   
any farther far a long time.   
  
"On hold?" Scully mouthed.  
  
He shook his head and gave her a pained look. Eventually he   
said, "Great, Doreen, thanks. Listen, is Joey--" Apparently   
he'd been cut off again. Several seconds passed. Mulder pushed   
the speaker phone button and suddenly the air was full of   
verbiage.  
  
"--and she only just came back from off-Island and was going to   
meetings and she met a nice guy and everything and it seemed like   
she was getting her life back together when suddenly *this*   
happens and people are saying suicide but they'd never say that   
if they knew her like I did--" Blessedly, Mulder hit the speaker-  
off button and Doreen's voice ceased.  
  
"Wow," Scully said.   
  
Doreen must have taken a breath because Mulder said, "I need to   
talk to Joe." Another pause. "*Chief* Joe, no kidding. Well, I   
need to talk to -- . . . Doreen . . . For crying out loud, Dori,   
would you just put me through to -- Thank you." Mulder glanced   
up, looking slightly embarrassed. Holding his hand over the   
mouthpiece of the phone, he whispered, "Inbred."   
  
Scully looked away, trying very hard not to laugh. She had long   
been accustomed to the odd combination of nostalgia and   
distaste Mulder felt toward the one-stoplight town where he   
was raised.   
  
After a few moments, he said, "Hi, Joe, this is Fox Mulder.   
Yeah, I heard -- that's why I'm calling. Actually, I hoped   
you'd tell me Irv was just hitting the hash pipe and it was   
all a mistake. No, he faxed us late last night -- early   
this morning, really." Glancing up at Scully, he added,  
"Listen, my partner's here, would you mind if I put this   
on speaker phone? Great."   
  
Mulder touched the speaker button again and said, "Chief Luce,   
this is Special Agent Dana Scully."  
  
"Hello, Chief," Scully said.   
  
"Good to meet you, Agent," Joe said. His voice sounded slightly   
canned coming through the speaker. "So, Fox, what exactly did   
Irv want? Don't tell me it was just to spare Patty the grief   
of telling you herself."  
  
"He wants to bring the South Road Ghost into it," Mulder said.   
  
A second or so of silence followed, and then Joe said, "Aw,   
Hell."   
  
"Actually if there was a South Road Ghost he'd have called the   
right place," Mulder said. "My partner was about to classify   
this as another X-File."  
  
"Refresh my memory . . . an X-File is a what again?" Joe asked.  
  
"We investigate paranormal phenomena," Mulder said. He shot   
Scully a mischievous look and added, "You know, chasing ghosts,   
Big Foot, lake monsters . . ."  
  
"Not all of which turn out to be what witnesses claim," Scully   
pointed out.  
  
"Right, right . . . you did the monster-man thing, the Chernobyl   
guy Dori says washed up out of Nantucket Sound." Joe said.  
  
Scully felt a surge of dismay that yet another person had read  
her out-of context quotes printed in the Midnight Inquisitor.  
A quick change of subject seemed to be best. "Chief, I thought   
it was a little odd that Mr. Stuckey knew so much about the  
manner of Kristie's death," Scully said. "He wasn't at the scene,   
was he?"  
  
Joe sighed. Scully imagined him rubbing his eyes in weariness.   
If he'd been up as late as Irv had, he wouldn't have gotten much   
sleep. "No -- Irv took a job as an orderly at the hospital   
four nights a week. When things get slow he hangs out in one of   
the ambulances and listens to the emergency band channels. Gets   
all the good dirt on the neighbors that way. He must have heard   
someone from Crime Scene Services making arrangements to   
transport the body. Jesus, he knew Kristie was dead before   
her own mother did, and the first thing that crosses his mind is   
that old ghost story. Man, he's a creepy old SOB. I'll have   
to see that he doesn't harass Mark and Patty. I'm sorry he   
bothered you."  
  
"No, not at all," Mulder said. "If there's anything Agent Scully   
or I could do to help we'd be glad." He seemed to hesitate a   
moment, then asked, "Do you have anything to go on? Any   
suspects? Dori was saying something about Kristie going to 12-  
step groups and meeting a new boyfriend . . ."  
  
"Yeah, there's a guy named Randy Akers she was seeing.   
We haven't talked to him yet -- apparently he was out last night.   
He's not a suspect at the moment. Actually we don't have *any*   
suspects. Right now this is just an equivocal death   
investigation," Joe said.  
  
"Can you give me an idea what happened?" Mulder asked.  
  
"I can tell you Kristie left her parents' house sometime after   
12:30 a.m., Thursday, wearing a real light jacket and her mom's   
shoes. It wasn't a nice night to go for a walk, either --   
just above freezing with falling sleet."  
  
Mulder was chewing on his pen cap, something he did when he was   
concentrating and didn't have any sunflower seeds. "She didn't   
have a fight, did she? Anybody hear her talking on the phone?"   
  
"Her family says no. Her youngest brother's still living at   
home -- it's possible the two of them got into it over something   
and he was too ashamed to say so. Still, she had a car, she   
could have driven somewhere if she wanted to get out of the   
house. Her mom says running off on foot in the cold like that   
is out of character for her." Joe paused for a moment, then   
said, "The Herrons probably won't mind my telling you this --   
it's not uncommon knowledge anyway. Kristie got into some   
trouble over in Boston last year. Drugs."   
  
Mulder made a soft noise of dismay.   
  
"She drew two years' probation, since she had no record and   
was able to give the DA's office some information on a guy   
they'd been looking for. The judge let her report over in   
Edgartown provided she stayed with her parents. It's only been   
about six months."  
  
"And everybody's thinking the worst, right?" Mulder asked.  
Scully heard his own family's experience with Vineyard   
ostracism in the bitterness of his tone.   
  
"I never said that, Fox," Joe said. "I honestly think she was   
done with the drug scene. I do. I'm just wondering if there was   
somebody in Boston who wasn't done with her. Someone sure put   
her through hell Thursday morning. She had a lot of what looked   
like knife cuts on her hands and a through-and-through stab wound   
to one leg."  
  
"Defensive wounds?" Scully asked.  
  
"Probably. There wasn't the kind of mutilation you sometimes   
see with a victim who's crossed a drug lord, but maybe he was   
just gearing up. I haven't discounted the possibility that she   
ran over the cliff in a panic while trying to escape," Joe said.  
  
"Who's doing the autopsy?" Mulder asked.  
  
"They're doing it in Boston, I don't know who specifically.   
Sergeant Tihkoosue from the Sate Police barracks in Oak Bluffs   
was going to attend, so he'd know as soon as anybody. I can ask   
him if you want," Joe said.   
  
Mulder looked over at Scully. He didn't even need to say the   
words. "Could you give us just a minute, Chief?" Scully asked.  
  
"Sure," Joe said. Scully hit the phone's mute button.  
  
"Mulder, the Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner is Dr. Clarence   
Kreger. He's got a teaching position at Harvard Medical School   
-- he's been an international pathology lecturer. Any District   
Attorney would leap at the chance to work with him," she said.  
  
"I don't care if he does 'pahk his cah in Hahvahd Yahd,' he   
hasn't seen the things you have," Mulder said.  
  
"I thought you said there was no X-File here," she said.  
  
"I said there was no South Road Ghost. In case you hadn't   
noticed, a connection to my family isn't exactly the key to great   
longevity. If there is anything strange about the way Kristie   
died you'll figure it out. If you say her death was   
straightforward then I'll be satisfied. Besides, if Kreger's   
schedule's as full as you say it is, he'll probably have some   
staff underling doing the autopsy. I'd rather have you do this   
than some overworked path resident," Mulder said.  
  
Still sitting on the edge of his desk, Scully bent her head,   
her hair forming a thin screen against his hopeful look.   
Neither spoke of his mother's death. "Mulder . . . some   
news comes better from someone unconnected with the family.  
If I have to tell Kristie's parents something they don't want  
to hear, it could put you in a very difficult position."  
  
"They can't ask for more than the truth, Scully. They shouldn't   
have to settle for less," Mulder said.   
  
She looked up at him. Only two nights ago she'd been awakened by   
his bone-wracking sobs. His mother had shut him out in death as   
she had in life, and it had wounded him in a way that simply   
being orphaned couldn't have. He'd pulled Scully into a crushing   
embrace and asked, "Why didn't she tell me?" As always, Scully   
had no answer. She could only hold him until his ragged gasps   
quieted and he was able to sleep. Afterward she'd lain awake a   
long time, replaying Teena Mulder's autopsy again and again in   
her mind. What if she'd missed some tiny forensic clue that   
would have allowed her to come to any conclusion other than   
suicide?  
  
"I trust your judgment." He spoke gently, as if to reassure her.   
"If you tell me bad news it's only because it's true."  
  
Scully released her breath slowly. "I'll volunteer and let the   
family decide," she said. She hit the phone's mute button and   
asked, "Chief, are you still there?"  
  
"Still here. What's going on?" Joe asked.  
  
"I'm a forensic pathologist," she said. "Mulder thought I might   
be of help to the investigation. I'm willing to do the autopsy   
if you and the family think my experience would be useful."  
  
"She's investigated a lot of strange deaths," Mulder said.  
  
"Well . . . no offense, but I think the State ME has seen his   
share of strange deaths too," Joe said.  
  
"Not like Scully has. Has Dr. Kreger ever seen a Level 4   
biological agent crawl out of a rock, through the seal of   
somebody's space suit and into a body cavity?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Good God . . . I hope not," said Joe. "Look, if you really   
want to help, I can mention your offer to Kristie's parents and   
see what they think. You should call Patty too -- she'd be glad  
to hear from you."  
  
"I'll have to do that. I appreciate you talking to me, Joe,"   
Mulder said.   
  
As Mulder reached toward the disconnect button Joe said, "Hey,   
Fox? You know there's no hard feelings, right? My uncle and I   
didn't have the same opinions on everything."  
  
"Sure. Talk to you later," Mulder said.   
  
"Yeah, bye," Joe said. Mulder hung up the phone.  
  
"What was that about?" Scully asked.  
  
"It's a long story," Mulder said. "One of these complicated   
things that happens in small towns where people get cut off from   
the world during the winter." He started gathering up the pile   
of bent cards and notes and pushing them back in his desk drawer.  
  
"Such as? Are we talking Donner's Pass or what?" Scully asked.   
She saw a flicker of amusement cross his face.  
  
"Not quite." He shut the drawer and looked up at her. "Joey's   
uncle -- whose name was also Joseph Luce -- was the Chilmark   
Chief of Police back in the 70's. He never thought much of my   
family's story about how my sister disappeared."  
  
"He blamed you," Scully said.  
  
"He blamed my father, actually. No charges were ever filed but we   
became personae non gratae with the neighbors pretty quick. I   
had to listen to a lot of bullshit when I went back to the   
Vineyard to visit my dad. At one point Joey actually accused me   
of helping to cover up my sister's murder, so I punched his   
lights out for him. It didn't exactly endear me to the Island's   
premier law enforcement family."  
  
"I bet not," Scully said.  
  
"When my father was murdered, Joseph Luce, Sr., was Dukes County   
Sheriff," Mulder said. "Unfortunately he hadn't forgotten me."  
  
"He called me," Scully said, remembering suddenly. "He left   
about three messages a day on my answering machine when I was in   
New Mexico."  
  
"He called me too. He and Liz Hawley of the West Tisbury PD   
figured I was looking pretty good for the only up-island homicide   
in 20 years. Then you managed to trace the gun back to Krycek   
and   
the investigation stalled out over a literal shadowy one-armed   
man. I can imagine that went over real well with Sheriff Luce."   
  
"He couldn't have wanted you to be guilty," Scully said.  
  
"No," Mulder said. "It was the law of averages that bugged him.   
Do the Mulders: A., have the worst luck in history, or B., have   
connections to dangerous people they shouldn't? I think he had   
us pegged as an organized crime family. Might not have been far   
wrong, really."  
  
"Mulder, that is completely unfair to your parents. Your father   
died trying to expose the men who killed him," Scully said.  
  
"Yeah," Mulder said, as if unwillingly conceding the   
point. "Joe called me after what happened with Roche. He was   
with the Chilmark Police by then. He wanted to know why I'd let   
a sociopathic child killer loose on his island. I never called   
him back. What was I going to say?"   
  
"The Luce family aren't your judges, Mulder," Scully said.  
  
"No, but Cheryl Luce used to be Samantha's best friend. Maybe   
Joey was mine -- I don't know. We spent a lot of time at their   
house in the months before my sister was taken. Home wasn't so   
great just then. My dad wasn't working so hard to expose the men   
who killed him at the time."  
  
"I'm sorry," was all Scully could think to say. She still felt   
awkward at moments like this. She was a fixer by nature. It was   
Mulder himself who'd helped her understand that suffering was   
normal, that a person could hurt without being broken. She kept   
silent and hoped she was a soothing presence.  
  
Finally he said, "I lied to you -- the Vineyard is haunted. But   
only by the past." He got up and walked out into the hall. She   
repressed her urge to follow. When he wanted her, he knew where   
she'd be.  
  
***** 


	2. resurgam2

A few hours later Scully got a message asking her to go up to   
Skinner's office. Mulder's presence was not requested. Though   
she couldn't think of anything she'd done lately that would get   
herself in trouble, she went with a sense of trepidation. When   
Skinner's secretary showed her in, she said, "You asked to see   
me, sir?" //Please don't let this be about anything Mulder did .   
. .// she thought. She hated it when their superiors tried to   
play them against one another.   
  
"Have a seat, agent," Skinner said, gesturing toward an empty   
chair. This was never a good sign. Scully smoothed her skirt   
under her and sat down. "I just received a call from the Cape   
Cod and Islands District Attorney's office," Skinner said. "They   
said you'd volunteered to do the autopsy of a young woman in   
Boston."  
  
"Yes -- is that a problem?" Scully asked.   
  
"No. In fact I think it's a wonderful idea," Skinner said.  
  
"Sir?" Scully asked. Something was up. Skinner never called   
anything she and Mulder did "wonderful."   
  
"Agent Scully . . . there are people in the Bureau who don't   
appreciate the work you and Agent Mulder do. They don't see its   
value. This would be a good time for you to perform a service   
they can appreciate. I can have you in Boston tonight so you can   
do the autopsy first thing in the morning. Volunteering to do   
work outside of normal office hours will reflect positively on   
your next performance review," Skinner said.  
  
As usual, Scully was left scrambling to read between the lines.   
"Is the validity of my and Agent Mulder's work being questioned   
more than usual, sir?" she asked.  
  
"Why would you say that?" Skinner asked.  
  
"You mentioned this would be 'a good time' to perform a service   
others can appreciate," Scully said.  
  
"It's always a good time for that. Your flight leaves at six."   
When she didn't move at once, he added, "If you need to pack a   
bag you might want to get going."  
  
A few minutes later she was back in the basement, slamming the   
door to the office. Mulder stood up behind his desk. "What   
happened? What'd he say?" he asked.  
  
"We're in trouble," Scully said. She pulled her purse from its   
usual place in a file drawer and dropped it on her desk.   
  
"For what? I haven't even broken my cell phone lately," Mulder   
said. He crossed the room to stand by her side.  
  
"I don't know. He was dropping hints about us needing to do PR   
work to appease the powers that be. I get really tired of these   
guessing games. Why can't he be straight with us for once?" She   
retrieved her Dictaphone's batteries from where they sat charging   
on a shelf and tossed them into her purse.   
  
"He might be trying to do us a favor," Mulder said.  
  
"Maybe. I can never tell. And he doesn't even ask me, 'Is a six   
o'clock flight convenient for you?' It's, 'If you want to pack a   
bag, you'd better *go.*" Scully recalled it was supposed to rain   
that weekend. She strode toward their lopsided hat rack to grab   
her umbrella.  
  
Mulder caught her by the wrist, gently turning her toward   
him. "Hey . . . hey, calm down. When was the last time you were   
in Boston?" he asked.  
  
"It's been a long time," she said. It was actually for his   
father's funeral in 1993, but she thought it best not to mention   
that.  
  
"Well, when you get done with the autopsy I'll show you around.   
It's a great city if you don't mind homicidal drivers," Mulder   
said.  
  
"Mulder, you're not going," she said.  
  
"Yes, I am," he said.  
  
"No, you're not. Skinner made it clear he was authorizing one   
plane ticket. It was only by being an Assistant Director of the   
FBI that he guaranteed me a flight out tonight at all."  
  
"I can drive," Mulder said. She thought he was trying not to   
laugh. It really bugged her when he thought she was funny.   
"It's a six hour trip -- four, if I drive like I'm already in   
Boston." He gently shook her wrist. "Come on," he said.  
  
"I'll be doing the autopsy into the afternoon and then we'll just   
have to turn around and come home," she said.  
  
"Why? You think somebody's going to tell on us if we don't?" he   
asked.  
  
Scully found herself fighting a smile. "I'll actually need to   
sleep before I do this autopsy," she said.   
  
"You'll sleep," he said. He bent and kissed her gently just   
below her ear. She was surprised and therefore vulnerable. She   
felt her breath catch in her throat. "Between bouts of   
screaming, wall-pounding sex." He placed his next kiss low on   
her cheek. If she let him go on long enough he'd make it around   
to her mouth.   
  
"We're at work," she pointed out, but she didn't back away.   
  
Mulder had always shown a perverse enjoyment of getting her   
excited in public places where the chance of release was nil.   
She turned and rested her hand against his cheek. His pupils   
were widely dilated circles within rings of hazel-green;   
arousal was like a narcotic.   
  
Scully brushed her lips against his. He tasted faintly of salt,   
faintly of the lemon he put in his tea. When he tightened his   
arms around her ribcage she could feel the speed of his pulse in   
his neck. Their physical relationship was very new and at times  
its intensity was overwhelming.   
  
Their kiss was interrupted by the distant whirr of elevator doors   
opening and the squeal of unoiled cart wheels. A lot of old but   
serviceable equipment was kept in the Hoover Building basement,   
and Bureau support staff were frequently sent to bring it up to   
the "inhabited" levels.   
  
Coming to her senses, Scully squirmed out of Mulder's embrace   
and brushed her tousled hair back behind her ears. It wasn't   
even four o'clock yet, and the night seemed a long way off.   
"Okay, that's enough. You're terrible," she said.   
  
For a moment there was a wild look in Mulder's eyes, but   
it soon faded to one of longing, like a man relinquishing   
something long desired. Then that was gone too and he became   
his everyday self, giving her his mock hurt routine.  
  
"That's not what you said the other night," he said.   
  
She pitched a wad of paper at him. Mulder picked up his coffee   
mug and started speaking to it. "Did you like that, Cancer Man?   
Huh? That turn you on?" His clowning did not completely   
dissipate the tension. It was still there, like thunder in the   
distance.   
  
"Mulder, they are not bugging your coffee cup," Scully told him.  
  
"You're right -- it's probably the electrical outlet that doesn't   
work." He bent over to shout at the offending outlet, "Better   
than 'Celebrity Skin,' isn't it Krycek, you pervert!"  
  
Scully rifled through filing cabinet drawers, picking up the   
things she would need in Boston. She told herself to get the   
stupid grin off her face before she went down into the parking   
garage. What was she so happy about, anyway? It never paid to   
get too happy. Something was bound to happen and make things   
worse than ever.   
  
When she had everything she needed she stood on her toes to give   
Mulder a little kiss, a decent kiss, on the mouth. "Goodbye,"   
she said.  
  
"See you," he said. She felt his eyes on her as she went out the   
door. Maybe she'd have time to take a cool shower before she   
got on the plane.  
  
*****  
  
As it turned out Scully did not spend the night screaming and   
pounding the wall. She did dissolve into fits of giggles when   
Mulder scooped her out of bed and attempted to fold her into a   
fairly gymnastic sexual position in the tiny closet. He hit his   
head on the mass of coat hangers and made them jangle. She   
told him he had been alone with his porn collection for far too   
long.   
  
In the gray hour just before dawn Scully lay in bed with her head   
resting in the hollow of Mulder's shoulder. He'd been asleep for   
more than an hour, but sleep eluded her. She lay watching the   
green numbers on the clock as they counted their inexorable way   
toward 7 a.m. //Typical.// She placed her hand on his left   
chest, felt the slow beat of his heart below the ribcage.   
  
Her thoughts turned to Daniel. Neither quite awake or asleep,   
her memories played themselves out as images and sensations.   
  
It seemed that she was once again an ambitious young pathology   
Resident, sitting in a lecture hall while Daniel addressed his   
first-year med students. He strode back and forth before the   
first row of seats, sometimes climbing up into the risers. All   
his notes were in his head, so he was free to make eye contact   
with as many students as possible. He smiled; he joked with   
them. A few of the less charismatic staff members derisively   
called him Dr. Elvis. It didn't matter. In a class of 100   
students, every one of them would go home feeling as if Daniel   
had been speaking to him or her personally.   
  
That afternoon he had been speaking about an outbreak of   
hemorrhagic fever in Bolivia. Not exactly romance novel stuff.   
And yet the sunlight poured through the tall, narrow windows,   
gilding away the gray in his hair and flashing off the cuff  
studs of his blue-and-white striped shirt as he gestured.   
He spoke so passionately that she almost felt as if she were   
in church, watching a fiery preaching of the gospel.   
  
Scully's first crush had been on a young deacon who helped   
celebrate youth Masses near the Texas naval base where her   
family lived in the late 70's.   
  
In Daniel's classroom she felt like a wicked schoolgirl once  
again, and relished every moment of it. All she had to do   
was look attentive and innocent. No one had to know about   
the desire in her heart.  
  
Daniel knew. They held one another's gazes too long when he   
said things like, "burning with a terrible fever," or "tossing   
and turning in bed." He'd said, "It's nothing you'll ever   
forget, is it, Dr. Scully, watching a man literally eaten from the   
inside out, begging for relief with every breath?"  
  
She'd said, "No, Dr. Waterston, it isn't."   
  
The elation, the sense of conquest, hadn't lasted. He was   
married, of course. His protestations about his unhappy marriage   
sounded weak even to Scully's besotted ears.   
  
She had given something away that afternoon in the lecture hall.   
Too late, she realized it was the part of herself that guarded   
her integrity and self-respect. Those qualities were much   
harder to reclaim than they were to lose.  
  
Her dream state shattered at the sound of the bedside clock: " .   
. . fifty degrees and raining on this gloomy April Saturday.   
Approximately 800 customers in western Barnstable County are   
still without power due to the storm that blew through early   
Thursday morning --"   
  
Mulder moaned and rolled over to beat the alarm into silence.   
He squinted at the clock's numbers and said, "Oh, God. I'm sorry   
I ever got you into this."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Scully said. "How can I resist the   
opportunity to perform a service the Bureau can 'appreciate?'"   
She slowly rolled up until she was sitting on the edge of the   
bed. She wanted coffee. Maybe that would dispel the troubling   
dream images in her head.   
  
"Thank you," Mulder said. She turned and looked at him. In the   
darkness his expression was unreadable, but he reached out and   
caressed the small of her back. He clearly wanted the justice   
system to do its best by the daughter of his old friend, and he   
believed Scully was the best. That kind of faith was sobering.   
  
"If having me do the autopsy helps the Herrons feel better, then   
it's the right thing to do," Scully said. "I know what it's like   
to lose someone, and then feel like the whole system is working   
against you."  
  
"You all right?" Mulder asked.   
  
"Yeah," she said. "Just need to switch gears. I have to be in   
pathology mode now."   
  
He seemed to accept her explanation at face value. "Girlfriend,   
you go *be* pathological," he said, swatting her lightly on   
the behind.  
  
She got up and went into the bathroom. When she turned on the   
lights they made her squint. Soon she was under the spray of the   
shower, washing the musky scent of lovemaking off her body.   
//Mulder. Not Daniel, not Jack.// she reminded herself. //This   
is a different situation. You're a different person.//   
  
She was afraid she wasn't different enough.  
  
Scully did not like herself when she was in love. Over and over   
she'd started by giving away her heart, and ended up giving away   
her soul instead.   
  
Why did her love always seem to turn to self-betrayal?   
  
Well for one thing, she tended to pick men who had other interests   
more compelling than she was. Daniel had his wife, Jack had his   
own ambitions and career at the Bureau. Mulder had his aliens.   
No, that wasn't fair -- Mulder had shown a marked preference for   
her over aliens on several occasions. Of course, that wasn't   
exactly a ringing endorsement. She could just hear Father McCue   
saying, //"Do you, Fox, swear to prefer Dana to aliens on most   
occasions as long as you both shall live?"// She pressed her   
hands to her eyes. "Oh my God, I am *nuts,*" she said.  
  
*****  
  
She decided to walk the few blocks to the ME's office rather than   
contend with Boston's tangled nest of one-way streets. The   
morning was cool, and purple-gray rain clouds hung low in the sky.   
Except for a few pigeons, Scully had the wet sidewalks to   
herself. The sound of her footfalls was like a meditation.  
  
The night's fevered thoughts and desires fell away as she walked   
among the stately red brick buildings of Boston University   
Medical Center. This was the realm of learning and reason. //"Hic   
locus est ubi mors gaudet succerrere vitae" -- Here is the place   
where death delights to give aid to life.// Here she felt   
competent and in control.   
  
When she arrived at the Medical Examiner's Office the door was   
locked and the windows were dark. She glanced at her watch and   
found she was about 20 minutes early, so she composed herself to   
wait. A few moments later the door opened. A heavyset man   
whose pink face was splotched with spidered blood vessels leaned   
out. Scully's overwhelming impression of him was that he was at   
a high risk of developing melanoma. "You must be Dr. Scully,"   
the man said. "Hi, I'm Rob Conlin, the morgue attendant. Come   
on in." Scully noted the dropped r's and flattened o's of the   
classic Boston accent in his speech.  
  
"Thank you," she said, following him inside. "That's one of the   
friendliest greetings I've ever had at a morgue."  
  
Rob had a slightly wheezing laugh. "Oh, well, usually we have a   
secretary out here, but right now it's just you and me."  
  
That worried her slightly. "I am having a path assistant, aren't   
I? And I thought the State Police detectives were coming."  
  
"Sure, the police boys'll be here any time. As to the PA, I   
don't know. This was all arranged kind of suddenly. Don't   
worry about it though, Dr. Scully, I'll hold the flaps while you   
sew," Rob said.  
  
He showed her to the women's changing area, where she put on   
green scrubs and folded her clothes carefully into a locker. The   
place smelled like Lysol with just a hint of formalin. It was   
the smell of science and it helped focus her.   
  
When she walked into the body storage area itself she found Rob   
there, already suited up. "We're doing C-3 today, aren't we?" he   
asked. He checked the name card on the drawer. "Herron, Kristie   
Ann?"  
  
"That's right," Scully told him.  
  
"Want me to get her out for you? No sense waiting for the   
detectives just to get her on the table," Rob said.  
  
"Sure, thank you," she told him. Drawer C-3 made no sound as Rob   
slid it open. In one smooth motion he lifted the silver-gray   
body bag from the drawer and laid it on a gurney. Scully was   
impressed. Due to lack of muscle tone, cadavers were not easy to   
move even when the decedent was light. Most morgue attendants   
hauled and pushed bodies like sacks of potatoes. Clearly, Rob had   
been at this job a while and knew his business.   
  
The autopsy bays were on the second floor, and since none had   
been assigned Scully appropriated one. All the room's cabinets   
and counters were the same gleaming stainless steel as the   
autopsy knives. The severity was relieved somewhat by a single   
window, a nice change from the hospital basements Scully was used   
to. Unfortunately, the tinted glass made the day outside look   
even gloomier.   
  
Rob helped her weigh the body and get it onto the autopsy table.   
In extremis, Kristie Herron was 159 centimeters long and 102   
pounds, close to Scully's own height and weight. Other than   
that, it was hard to say what the girl had looked like in life.  
  
A series of catastrophic impacts had shattered her skull, causing   
her head to sag like a half-deflated balloon. The body had   
clearly lain on its face for several hours. Deep-red livor   
mortis colored most of what facial skin wasn't abraded away,   
except for odd blanched spots where some irregularity in the   
ground had provided enough pressure to keep blood from settling   
in the tissues. Kristie was dressed as Joe Luce had described   
her, in a neon yellow windbreaker, blue T-shirt and jeans, and   
one inexpensive women's sneaker with no socks. Her bare foot,   
which was perfect except for the livor on its anterior side, had   
silver-painted toenails. The police had placed paper bags over   
both of her hands.  
  
Scully gently probed some of the wounds with her gloved fingers   
while Rob stood by. Suddenly he turned his head and said,   
"There's the back door buzzer. That'll be the detectives. I'll   
go let 'em in."   
  
Scully hadn't heard a sound. It had been a while since she'd   
worked with an old-time morgue attendant like Rob -- the kind   
who'd spent 25 years learning the morgue's rhythms and who seemed   
to hear everything, see everything and know everything. It was   
perhaps a bit disturbing to be with a person whose greatest   
comfort level was among the dead.   
  
A few minutes later, Rob led two men into the autopsy bay,   
one in plainclothes and one in the blue uniform of the   
Massachusetts State Police. "You haven't started yet, have   
you?" the plainclothes man asked sharply.  
  
"I'm just doing a very general external examination," Scully   
said. //Don't let this guy start telling me how to do my job,//   
she thought.  
  
"I'm Detective Ron Davis," the plainclothes man said. "This is   
Sergeant Ken Tihkoosue from the Oak Bluffs installation on   
Martha's Vineyard." Davis was a tall, balding man with a russet-  
colored mustache. Ethnology was not Scully specialty, but she   
thought Tihkoosue's features looked Native American, perhaps   
Iriquois.  
  
"Good to met you. Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," she said.   
She peeled off one of her latex gloves to shake hands. Cops   
never hesitated to shake her hand when she was in the middle of   
an autopsy. Civilians tended to stare down at her hand and look   
ill. Trying to make conversation, she said, "My partner's from   
Martha's Vineyard."  
  
"Really, what part?" Tihkoosue asked.  
  
"He grew up in Chilmark and West Tisbury. His name is Fox   
Mulder. You might know him," She said.  
  
Tihkoosue shook his head and said, "By reputation only." Scully   
hoped Mulder's reputation on the Vineyard wasn't as bad as he   
thought it was.   
  
Despite her concerns, both police officers were helpful during   
the autopsy. Tihkoosue photographed the body's hands while   
Davis held a small ruler next to the incised wounds. The cuts   
were angry, red-brown furrows that ranged in length from a   
centimeter-and-a-half to more than seven. Most were about half   
a centimeter deep, well into the muscle layer without involving   
bone. In a way that was a shame, since cut bone retained a much   
more accurate impression of a weapon's blade than flesh did.   
  
"These are all consistent with defense wounds," Scully said.   
She moved her gloved fingers over the body's hands without   
touching them. Paler subcutaneous tissue shone dully between   
the edges of Kristie's slit skin. "Notice the roughly parallel   
cuts between the left wrist and the little finger. That's a   
classic blade-deflecting pattern." To illustrate, she swept her  
left hand outward as if knocking away a knife with the side of   
her palm. "The Y-shaped collection of wounds over here," she   
pointed to the much-cut webbing between Kristie's right   
forefinger and thumb, "was likely caused by blocking or grasping   
an edged weapon." It was almost as if she were teaching forensic   
pathology at Quantico again. Her voice was confident,   
dispassionate, miles away from the emotional turmoil she'd felt   
that morning. Even Davis had grown quiet and attentive.  
  
"What about those diagonal cuts across the palms? They look   
almost ritualistic," Tihkoosue said. He pointed to a deep cut   
that ran across Kristie's right hand, then to its near mirror-  
image on the left. The two wounds angled away from the body at   
precisely the same degree, like the wings of a deadly butterfly.   
  
"Here," Scully said. She picked up both wrists and rotated the   
hands 180 degrees. When she held them palms up with the thumbs   
together, they approximated a blocking gesture in front of the   
abdomen. "Pull the fingers back," she said. Davis did so. The   
wounds' inner edges met. They were not two cuts but one, formed   
by a single slash across both hands. "All the hand damage   
suggests the knife was held low or at a distance of several   
inches. When a blade is closer people tend to block with their   
forearms," Scully said. "Actually, I'm surprised there aren't   
more sharp-force injuries to the rest of the body."  
  
"It's hard to tell with the head and neck in the condition   
they're in," Davis pointed out. "You think the damage from the   
fall could have obliterated any obvious knife wounds?"  
  
"I suppose it's possible. The internal exam will tell," Scully   
said. She doubted there were hidden knife wounds in the tissues   
of Kristie's throat. The flesh there was abraded and torn --   
cracked, more precisely, in the manner expected when a body   
struck a hard object with tremendous force -- but the wound edges   
were jagged and irregular, not the signature smooth cuts of a   
knife.   
  
She turned her attention to the only other sharp-force injury on   
the body, the through-and-through stabbing injury to the left   
thigh. The entrance wound bore the purplish stamp of a hilt mark   
above the slightly squared-off superior edge. Scully had been   
able to form a general picture of the weapon: a long, thin,   
single-edged knife that was honed quite sharp. It would be a   
kitchen knife rather than a hunting or military model.   
  
The scenario developing in her mind was that of a crime of   
passion. The knife was a sort that might be grabbed from a   
counter on impulse, the vicious wounds on Kristie's hands bore   
witness to the attacker's fury. What had stopped him or her   
from delivering a lethal blow?   
  
There was a fine line between crime scene reconstruction and   
psychological analysis and Scully knew she should not cross it.   
Establishing motive was the duty of the detectives and the   
District Attorney. Still, long association with Mulder had   
gotten her in the habit of asking "why" as well as "how."  
  
"I want to look at her clothing again," she said.   
  
Davis set the ruler aside and went to open the paper bags that   
Kristie's clothes had been neatly folded into. Scully exchanged   
her bloodied latex gloves for clean ones and followed him. "What   
are you thinking?" Davis asked.  
  
"The wound pattern's so unusual I want to make sure I'm not   
missing something," she said. She watched as Davis laid out the   
jacket, T-shirt and jeans on a stainless-steel counter.   
Forensically, the jacket was the most useful. Its rip-stop nylon   
resisted puncture by semi-sharp natural objects like roots and   
stones, but a fine blade drawn across it even lightly would fray   
and part the fibers. Scully switched on the light beneath the   
overhead cabinet to get a better view of the fabric, which was   
crumpled and dried hard with blood and sea salt.   
  
She'd noted before the clothing was removed that it bore far more   
slash marks than the body did. This was normal and could result   
from a number of things, such as near-misses or a blade passing   
through more than one layer of fabric. What she wanted to verify   
was that all the cutting and scoring marks were in the middle of   
the body, between the approximate level of Kristie's breasts and   
her knees. Scully ran her fingertips over the jacket's upper-  
left chest, usually a prime target for an attacker wielding a   
knife. Even probing and stretching of the cloth revealed no   
defects.   
  
"Is it possible the attacker was crouching or kneeling down?" she   
asked. "Or maybe he has a disability of some kind, a limitation   
in the movement of his shoulder?" She sensed Davis and   
Tihkoosue's glance at one another. She looked up at them.  
  
Tihkoosue said, "The man Kristie informed on to the DA in Boston   
is a mid-level coke dealer. He took a bullet in the gut once and   
it wrecked his spine. He uses a wheelchair now."  
  
"I suppose that could account for this wound pattern, depending   
on the length of his reach and the nature of his injury. How   
accessible is the crime scene location?" Scully asked. From the   
photos they'd shown her the area looked very wooded and wild.  
  
"To a man in a wheelchair? It's not. That's the problem,"   
Tihkoosue said, shaking his head.   
  
"There are chairs designed to go off of paved surfaces," Scully   
said.  
  
Davis leafed through the folder he'd brought and removed several   
crime scene photos. He held them fanned in front of her like a   
hand of cards. Even from looking at the partially-covered   
images Scully could see there was no track cut through the   
underbrush such as a heavy-duty wheelchair would make. "Whoever   
Kristie met out in those woods, they didn't roll there," Davis   
said. "We're keeping the guy in mind though. His name is John   
McBer, but on the street they call him 'Frosty,'"  
  
"The snowman. Of course," Scully said. She considered whether   
to discuss her findings in detail with Mulder. One the one hand,   
his behavioral science background might help him make sense of   
the strange wound pattern. On the other, Kristie was the   
daughter of his boyhood friend. Hearing the grisly minutiae   
might be excruciating for him.   
  
In the end, Mulder made the decision for her. Scully was   
examining tissue samples under a microscope when she heard his   
familiar footsteps in the hall. She glanced up and saw that Rob   
had left his task of stitching the body's skin back over the   
skull. He must have gone to answer the back doorbell. Once   
again, Scully had never heard it ring.   
  
When Mulder appeared in the doorway, she darted past the   
detectives and planted herself in front of him, her   
hands pressed against the jambs. "Don't -- it's bad," she said.   
Mulder looked startled at her protectiveness, but not as startled   
as the morgue attendant behind him. Mulder had an FBI badge; how   
could Rob know he shouldn't have admitted him?  
  
"I knew it would be bad," Mulder said. He was wearing his off-  
duty clothes, a black sweater and jeans, which made him seem more   
out of place, more vulnerable. He put his hand on her shoulder   
and gently pushed her aside.   
  
"Help me cover her up," Scully snapped at Rob. The attendant   
looked bewildered. "He knew her," she said. Rob hurried to grab   
a sheet from one of the steel cabinets. The body block had been   
removed from beneath Kristie's back, and the great, Y-shaped   
incision in her torso closed. But all of Rob's careful stitches   
could not repair her crushed skull or conceal the larval activity   
in her wounds.   
  
Scully and Rob draped a sheet over the body up to its shoulders.   
At least the covering gave the poor dead woman some dignity.   
Mulder gazed down at Kristie as he pulled on a pair of latex   
gloves. His expression was almost puzzled, as if he were trying   
to connect the ruin on the table with the child he had once   
known.   
  
"She's somewhere better -- this isn't her," Scully said, trying   
to explain away the horror.   
  
Much of the dead girl's hair had been shaved away so Scully could   
examine her skull injuries. What hair remained was shoulder-  
length and had perhaps been light brown in life. Mulder gently   
smoothed the strands away from Kristie's face. "She was born in   
the summer of 1973," he said. His voice had a strange, singsong   
distance to it. "My sister fell in love with her at first   
sight. She said she was going to baby-sit Kristie when she got   
older. It was her turn to be the big girl. She brought over all   
the baby toys she didn't play with anymore . . . started   
pestering my mom for a little sister." Mulder cupped the side of   
Kristie's face and caressed her bloodied cheek with his thumb.   
  
He looked up at Scully. His hazel eyes were pained but clear.   
"Homicide?" he asked softly.  
  
Scully hesitated. The mode of death might be complex, since it   
was unclear how Kristie had come to tumble off the cliff. Still,   
the knife wounds had been no accident. She gave him the short   
answer. "Yes. Homicide."   
  
He continued to stroke Kristie's matted hair for some moments.   
The room was silent. When a car passed on the wet street outside   
the sound was an intrusion. At last Mulder turned away and   
peeled off his gloves. He looked at the detectives and said,   
"I'm going to help you find who did this."   
  
Davis held his gaze as if seeking for meaning there. He turned   
to Scully with a wordless question in his eyes.  
  
"Detective Davis, This is my partner, Agent Mulder," Scully said.  
  
He nodded to Mulder and said, "Thanks, Agent. I appreciate the   
offer." He seemed respectful of Mulder's loss, but Scully heard   
politics in his voice. The man thought Mulder was a nut.   
  
"You'll want me later. Scully can tell you how to contact me,"   
Mulder said. He threw his gloves in the trash and strode out the   
door.  
  
Everybody stared after him for a second. Then the men all looked   
at Scully.  
  
"He'll be all right," she said, suddenly uncomfortable. It was   
as if the atoms in the air had picked up a charge. What had been   
a slow, objective procedure performed in the name of science had   
become something else, something with the keen edge of a crusade.   
  
Mulder tended to have that effect on people.   
  
***** 


	3. resurgam3

Later, she and Mulder sat in a restaurant near Boston Common. It   
was a quasi-Italian bistro that had apparently been something   
different and better when Mulder was young. Even in   
midafternoon the place was kept very dim. Candles in teardrop-  
shaped glass holders sat on every table, giving off a dull yellow   
glow.  
  
Mulder seemed particularly quiet and morose. Scully let him be,   
as much from fatigue as consideration. Few non-pathologists   
appreciated the amount of mental and physical energy it took to   
perform an autopsy under even optimal conditions, and that day's   
conditions had been far from optimal. Her greatest desire was to   
finish eating and take a very long nap.   
  
"I visited my parents' graves this morning," Mulder said. "Both   
of them, on opposite sides of the city. Just the way they would   
have wanted it."  
  
"I guess it's been a hard day," she said.   
  
"I'd never visited my dad's before," he said.  
  
"You're kidding," she said, then regretted how insensitive that   
sounded. He didn't seem to notice.  
  
"I never saw the point of going. I met my father's spirit in the   
New Mexico desert . . . or maybe it was a hallucination. I don't   
know. In any case my dad's out *there* . . ." he gestured at   
some indeterminate location in the distance. "Wherever   
semi-reformed Men In Black go when they die. He's not under a   
stone in Parkway Cemetery."  
  
Scully repressed her urge to lecture him on filial duty. "I   
think he'd be glad you went," she said.   
  
"Maybe," he said. An awkward silence of several seconds passed.   
Scully poked at the too-oily vegetable penne she didn't intend to   
finish. Since it was Lent she was avoiding meat, but she didn't   
seem to be benefiting from it spiritually. Maybe it was because   
Easter was so late this year that it didn't feel like Lent.   
  
Maybe it was because she was living in sin with her partner.   
  
Mulder gazed down at the table. Actually he seemed to be gazing   
through it at some distant image she could not see. "Albert  
Hosteen called the vision I had 'the origin place.' I saw my father  
there, and I asked him whether Samantha was with him. He said,   
'No.'" Mulder shook his head. "Why didn't they tell me?"  
  
Scully thought Alex Krycek had answered that question in the most   
violent and cruel way possible, but she didn't say so. It wasn't   
the answer to the question Mulder was really asking anyway. "I   
don't know," she said. "Mulder . . . do you want to go out to   
Martha's Vineyard? Do you need to see Kristie's family and Joe   
Luce? They seem to care about you." She thought that at the   
moment, he could use all the family he could get.  
  
"My sister is the JonBenet Ramsey of Dukes County," Mulder said.   
"You know what that means? None of us was ever shown to be   
guilty of what happened to her, but we'll never be innocent --   
not to the people out there."   
  
"Joe seemed to regret ever thinking you were guilty," Scully   
said.  
  
"If so, he's a pretty lonely voice," Mulder said.   
  
They were both silent while he poked at his pasta marinara.   
The piped-in muzak was some cheerful tune played on a wheezy   
accordion. Scully avoided looking him in the eye as she   
said, "I think you'd feel better if you helped."  
  
He released a long breath, and some of the tension seemed to   
leave his shoulders. "Kristie was a cute little baby, you know?  
I didn't give a damn about babies at the time, but I could tell  
she was cute. Or maybe I just thought so because I had a   
thing for her mother. I don't know."  
  
She nodded, then glanced up at him. This time he looked away.   
She'd known him long enough to understand that he sometimes cast   
her in the role of his spiritual counselor. Taking a page from   
his own list of psychological techniques, she kept her expression   
as blank as possible, knowing he'd read into it whatever he needed   
to see.   
  
He rubbed at his eyes, as if very tired. "I should go out there.  
If nothing else, I owe it to the Island people for letting Roche   
loose on them. Kristie didn't meet with some ghost out in those  
woods. It was a flesh-and-blood guy that I should help put away  
if I can."  
  
Scully remembered the results of the autopsy and didn't quite   
know how to reply. The investigator in her wanted to tell Mulder  
all the ugly details; the lover and friend in her wanted to   
protect him as much as possible.   
  
Apparently misreading her reticence, he said, "I'm sorry. I was   
going to show you around Boston."  
  
"No -- it's not that." She hesitated, but in the end she could  
keep nothing from him. "Mulder . . . Kristie miscarried at   
some point in the last several months. The internal damage was   
considerable, though there's some evidence of medical   
intervention, which probably saved her life. I found pitting   
typical of parturition scars on her pelvic bones. That means she   
was at least into her second trimester when it happened. The   
fetus might have been viable, at least at first."  
  
Mulder looked puzzled. "She lost a child?"  
  
"I think Kristie suffered from placenta abrupta, the sudden   
detachment of the umbilical cord from the uterine wall.   
It's a common complication in pregnancy among women who abuse   
cocaine," Scully said.   
  
She could tell the moment he remembered the faxed letter from Irv   
Stuckey. His expression became one of deep compassion. He   
quoted Irv, "'What happened in Boston.'"  
  
"Joe Luce said she'd been drug-free six months. The scarring   
looked more recent than that, but people who've badly abused   
themselves heal slowly. She'd damaged her heart, her arteries .   
. . it's amazing that she survived the birth, given the amount of   
hemorrhaging that was apparent. A child born under those   
conditions would have a very poor chance of survival," she said.  
  
"And the first thing that comes to his mind is the South Road   
Ghost story. What a bastard," Mulder said.  
  
"He may not have been the first to think of the story," Scully said.   
"If Kristie knew it as well, someone could have used it to   
frighten or confuse her. She must have been emotionally fragile   
as it was. Panic is as good an explanation as any for how she   
fell off the cliff, barring some undiscovered evidence that she   
was pushed."   
  
Mulder nodded. He seemed lost in thought. Scully continued, "If   
we do go out to Martha's Vineyard we'll have to remember to be   
particularly sensitive around the family on the subject of the   
child. Since Irv Stuckey knew about the pregnancy I expect   
Kristie's relatives know too, but it's possible they don't. Irv   
could have abused his access to hospital records or simply heard   
rumors. Actually he's seemed entirely too involved with this   
case from the beginning."  
  
"Irv gets the dirt on everyone in town and repeats it to make them  
sound as bad as possible. Since he has no good qualities, it's the  
only way to make himself look better," Mulder said.  
  
"Everybody has some good qualities," Scully said.   
  
He gave her a look that made it plain she could keep her comments   
on forgiveness and redemption to herself. "Sorry," she said.   
Every so often she found herself turning into her mother, who was   
relentless in her pursuit of finding something pleasant to say about   
everybody. She even liked Mulder, which for one of Scully's   
relatives was saying something.   
  
"At least I can tell Kristie's family that she was drug-free when   
she died. All the blood tests were negative," Scully said.   
  
"Ironic, really," Mulder said. "It's like the guy who gives up   
smoking and then gets hit by a speeding bus."  
  
Scully wasn't about to argue with him when he was in this frame   
of mind. "Are we going out to Martha's Vineyard?" she   
asked.  
  
He appeared to consider for a moment, and then said, "Yes."  
  
"All right," she said.   
  
The rest of their meal was quiet. Whatever was behind Mulder's   
silence was hidden from her.  
  
********  
  
A couple of hours later Mulder sat behind the wheel of his parked   
car, one of the few vehicles on the deck of the Woods-Hole-to-  
Vineyard-Haven ferry. Scully was asleep in the tilted-back   
passenger seat.  
  
Rain ran steadily down the windows and Mulder didn't bother   
running the wipers to dispel it. The glass had misted over   
inside from their breath, anyway. Car motors had to be turned   
off during the crossing so turning on the heater was out of the   
question. The ferry boasted a glassed-in shelter with padded   
bench seats, which were good for sightseeing but bad for napping.   
Scully had chosen the chilly crampedness of the car without   
reservation.   
  
Mulder fidgeted. The forced inactivity worsened the restless   
ache inside him. He wanted to turn on the radio. He wanted to   
wake Scully up so he would have someone to talk to. He felt a   
dull sense of . . . what? Dread. Dread lay in his soul like a   
block of lead as they approached the Island.   
  
The rocking of the waves in Vineyard Sound and the slow chugging   
of the steam ship were too familiar, like an unwelcome caress.   
He had an eerie sense of the past overlaying the present.   
  
He hoped this wasn't a seizure aura. Ever since Dr. Goldstein had   
drilled holes in his head as an aid to repressed memory recovery,   
Mulder had sometimes experienced near-hallucinatory flashbacks of   
his past. Not all the flashbacks were of traumatic events, but   
the experience itself was disturbing. Stress made the problem   
worse. Scully was of the opinion that he suffered from minor   
seizure activity due to brain lesions.   
  
Whatever the ultimate cause was, Mulder felt that if he shut his   
eyes he might open them to find himself sitting behind the wheel   
of the rustbucket Nova he drove back in '78 and '79. On the   
way to the Vineyard to visit Dad.  
  
Mulder had always felt a certain dread when returning to the   
Island after his sister disappeared. He'd associated it with his   
father, with whom he had a conflicted relationship at best. But   
Dad wasn't out there anymore, and the dread remained. It must be   
something else then. Mulder tried to focus on the present   
moment: the sensation of his fingers pressing against the   
plastic of the steering wheel, Scully's soft breathing in the   
seat next to him.   
  
He rubbed a hole in the windshield fog and turned on the car's   
electricity so he could run the wipers. Cold air rushed in   
through the vents, and Scully stirred. Mulder shut the useless   
heater off. The outdoors was visible now, an endless expanse of   
iron-colored water beyond the ferry's white railing. It might   
have been November rather than April. A good day to stay   
indoors.  
  
**  
The flashback came on like a blow to the stomach.   
  
The car around him receded to dim awareness. He was ten years   
old, maybe eleven, lying on the floor of Mrs. Luce's back room   
in Chilmark. Rain fell from a leaden sky and ran down the windows.  
The Luces had baseboard heat, which made even the thin, hard carpet  
a cozy haven.  
  
The air smelled like warm crayons. The Mulder and Luce children   
lay sprawled on the floor, drawing pictures on the backs of old   
forms Joey's uncle brought over from the police station. Mrs.   
Luce was in the kitchen, talking to herself. Really she was   
talking to Mr. Luce, who was in heaven. That's why Joey and   
Cheryl had an uncle instead of a dad. Sometimes Cheryl talked to   
her daddy in heaven, too. Joey didn't. Instead he drew pictures   
of Jesus.   
  
Fox looked over at Joey's drawing. It was of Jesus deflecting   
bullets with his hand like Superman. He was protecting a group   
of cops from some bad guys. Everybody in the picture was   
frowning and looking mad. Crosses hemmed the drawing like a   
fence. Fox sensed that Joey's SuperJesus pictures were about   
being scared. They were about Mrs. Luce talking to the air in   
the kitchen, about what was on the front side of some of the   
forms they drew on.   
  
The children liked the murder scene investigation forms the best   
because there was a body outline you could color in and draw   
clothes on. Cheryl and Samantha cut the paper bodies out for   
dolls for a while, but that bothered Mrs. Luce for some reason   
and she told her bother-in-law to quit bringing those over. Fox   
and Samantha's mom said that was just as well.   
  
Fox was drawing a picture of the tree fort he and Joey were   
building out in the woods by the little cemetery along South   
Road. Fox had told his mom they were going to spend the night in   
it, but she said no. Samantha said she would be too scared to   
stay there all night because of ghosts, which just showed what a   
baby she was. There was no such thing as ghosts, and anyway if   
dead people started to scare you, you could just talk to them   
like Mrs. Luce talked to Joey's dad.   
  
Samantha was doing one of her usual dumb rainbows-and-flowers   
drawings, but this was worse because she was copying off of   
Cheryl. Or maybe it was the other way around. "Do your own   
drawing," Fox told her.  
  
"This *is* my own drawing," Samantha said.  
  
"You're copying off of her," Fox said, pointing at Cheryl.  
  
"We wanted to draw the same thing," Samantha said. She glanced   
up and he saw the flash of anger in her pale green eyes. (Had he   
forgotten that there was something in her as hard as gemstone)?  
  
"Kids, be nice," Mrs. Luce called from the kitchen.   
  
Fox stifled his resentment at his sister's unoriginality because   
you had to act better in other people's houses. He added a   
picture of a stupid-looking girl to his drawing.   
  
Joey was clearly concentrating hard as he drew details on the   
police cars, right down to the whip antennas. Fox never   
questioned why a boy without a father in the house should feel   
afraid. On nights when his dad was gone, which was a lot, his   
mom would pull the curtains closed on every window in the house.   
Sometimes she took the phone off the hook, and no matter how many   
times her kids hung it up again, she'd take it back off. Somehow   
it was not something Fox or Samantha ever asked about. Once,   
Fox's dad had shown him how to use the revolver he kept up high   
on a shelf. Dad said he should never try to use guns until he   
was older, but he showed him how it worked anyway. Fox was glad.   
He believed in bad guys like in Joey's picture, but he wasn't too   
sure he believed in SuperJesus.  
  
The flashback was over as quickly as it began. In its aftermath   
Mulder felt weak and sick. Somehow the present still seemed   
unreal. The weight and mass of his adult body felt wrong. The   
opening of "Slaughterhouse Five" floated up from the dark well of   
his brain: "Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time."  
  
Scully stirred. Had he spoken aloud? He reached out and took   
her hand. Her small, manicured fingers felt very warm against   
his palm. Her eyes fluttered open at the touch. "Mulder? My   
God, your hands are icy . . . are you all right?" Whatever she   
saw in his face made her sit up straight. She hooked an errant   
strand of her hair behind her ear as if to smooth away the   
vulnerability revealed by sleep. She looked intently into his   
eyes -- a doctor now rather than a lover, probably checking the   
relative size of his pupils.  
  
"I'm all right," he mumbled. In a few minutes that would be   
true. He knew the sense of dull shock, the faint unfamiliarity   
about her would fade, and with that knowledge came a sense of   
loss. Perhaps the worst thing about being periodically thrust   
into the past was his reluctance to return. He turned away from   
her and gazed at the fogged-over windshield.   
  
"You need to see a neurologist," Scully said. She'd never   
articulated the accusation that underlay her words, but Mulder   
heard it. She still hadn't forgiven him for drilling holes in   
his head in the first place.  
  
"I don't need a neurologist. It's emotional," he said. If he   
really was having seizures, the Bureau would park him at a desk   
and the state would suspend his driver's license. He'd rather   
be considered neurotic.   
  
"See a psychiatrist, then," she said. "When you come out of one   
of those . . . trance states you look horrible, like you're going   
to pass out."  
  
"I'm not going to pass out."  
  
"What if that happened while you were driving? You could kill   
someone."  
  
"I'm fine," he said.  
  
"Mulder, an altered state of consciousness with nausea and   
weakness is not fine," she said.  
  
"I said I'm all right. Would you drop it?"   
  
He saw hurt on her face, and then the shield of   
anger went up. "Whatever," she said. She turned to the   
passenger window, shrugging into the seat. After a few seconds   
she dug a stack of papers out of her bag in the back seat and   
flipped through them as if looking for something. Mulder could   
tell she wasn't reading.  
  
His hands slid down the sides of the steering wheel. He'd told   
her once that the night she slipped beneath the covers of his bed   
and kissed him awake was the happiest of his life. For days   
afterward he'd lived in a cloud of bewildered euphoria, expecting   
to wake up from the dream at any moment -- probably in a cell   
somewhere with wires running out of his brain.   
  
How long had he waited for her to come to him? He'd been like a  
man who sits motionless with his arm outstretched, hoping a   
little wild bird would hop into his hand.   
  
Of all times, why had she picked now to fall in love with him?   
Now, when he'd lost everything else that made life worth living?   
There were days when he barely felt like a man. She deserved so   
much better. He looked over at her and saw she was still   
ignoring him. Good. All the more excuse to stare.  
  
There was almost no trace left of the fresh-faced girl in the   
ugly blazer he'd first met -- the supposed spy sent by The   
Powers That Be to discredit him. She was thinner now, sparer.  
It was as if the cancer had worn away everything but the   
essential. At times she seemed almost translucent, like an   
ivory comb after much use.   
  
He'd noticed the ugly blazers vanished after her sister died.   
That happened sometimes in families, where one sister was   
beautiful and the other went out of her way to be plain.   
Although Scully still grieved for Melissa, she'd bloomed when she   
was no longer in her sister's shadow. Would something like that   
have happened to Samantha if Mulder had been taken instead? Had   
she left qualities for him to inherit?   
  
The tightness in his throat was painful. "She was happy.   
Happier than I ever was," he said.  
  
Scully looked over at him. "Who?" she asked.   
  
"Samantha. There wasn't a lot in our lives to be happy about,   
even before . . ." He did not say the words. Let that memory   
sleep. He swallowed past the tightness and tried again, "She   
enjoyed little things I missed."   
  
Samantha's dusty and water-stained diary was the most harrowing   
book he had ever read. In it she described how she practiced   
loving things to make sure she remembered how: a blue willow  
beetle, a dandelion, fuchsia nail polish dried to the side of   
its glass bottle. A kid's treasures. Junk. She seemed   
afraid of loving anything bigger than she could hold in her   
hand. Who could blame her?  
  
"In my memories she seems so real to me," he said. "More real   
than she did when we were growing up. It's as if I know her   
better now than I ever have."  
  
For a few moments the only sounds were their own breathing and   
the hypnotic humming of the ferry engines. Scully reached over   
and touched his shoulder. She knew what he meant about the dead   
being more present than the living. She'd had that feeling after   
her father and Melissa died, but it was strongest after she lost   
Emily. For months afterward, Scully met the child everywhere: in   
a church, in a car, in the faces of strangers' children. Her   
sense of Emily's presence was so strong that sometimes she felt   
sure the girl would be there waiting for her when she turned the   
next corner. Scully believed in heaven but not in ghosts. She   
considered her experience phantom pain, like that of a man who   
still feels the wounds in his amputated leg.   
  
What could she say to Mulder? "It will pass?" Part of him   
wouldn't want it to pass. Of course he'd want to hold onto that   
emotional connection -- what else did he have? He didn't even   
have a faith to turn to. All she could think to say was, "You'll   
be all right." She reached up and ran her hand over his hair.   
"You'll be all right."   
  
*****  
  
Scully's first impression of the town of Vineyard Haven was of   
its eclecticness. Modern glass-and-steel structures stood across   
the street from Victorian houses with an embarrassment of   
gingerbread carving along their eaves. Old and new, commercial   
and residential, all seemed to have been mixed together. Easter   
decorations were displayed on many doors, and here and there were   
a Hebrew Passover inscriptions in silver cardboard.   
  
On a less gloomy day the place was probably charming. Still,   
Scully felt a faint sense of letdown. She thought it was   
probably because "the Vineyard," as residents called it, had   
acquired such a mystique of power and tragedy, first through its   
link to the Kennedy family, and then reinforced for her   
personally by her association with Mulder. But in reality   
Vineyard Haven was quite like what she had seen of Cape Cod.   
Just a nice New England town in the rain.   
  
She watched the buildings: brick; stone; clapboard and concrete;   
as they passed, and tried to imagine how the town looked when   
Mulder was a boy -- the Vineyard Haven Samantha had last seen.   
  
Images from her own childhood came to her: little girls in pink   
swing coats and shiny black shoes led by the hand up the steps to   
church; blue-suited boys purposely stepping in the puddles that   
formed on the worn risers and being scolded in a whisper by their   
parents. That was Easter as Scully had known it.  
  
It seemed quite natural when they passed a church bulletin board   
that read, "Look, your king is coming to you: humble, and mounted   
on a donkey." They had traveled most of a block before the   
context of that Bible quote sunk in.   
  
"Oh, God, Holy Week starts tomorrow," Scully said. She dug for   
her planner among the junk in the back seat and confirmed what   
she'd just realized -- tomorrow was Palm Sunday.  
  
"Is that a problem?" Mulder asked, glancing over at her.  
  
"No. Yes. I don't know," she said. Her family only demanded   
her presence on Easter Sunday, a full week away. What really   
alarmed her was that Holy Week had snuck up on her. Had it   
really been so long since she attended Mass? She'd obviously   
given up the wrong thing for Lent. Had she given up, say, her   
cell phone, she'd have been counting the days until Easter. "Do   
they have a Catholic church out here?" she asked. She'd made no   
arrangements, no inquiries.   
  
"Only when the Kennedys are in town. The rest of the time it's   
the high school gym," Mulder said. He must have caught her look   
of panic because he added, "Of course they have Catholic churches   
out here. Relax."  
  
She leaned back against the seat, but could not relax. Faith had   
meant so much more to her since she lost Emily. During the worst   
of her grief she had attended Mass nearly every day. Perhaps it   
was an exaggeration to call it a balm to her soul. It was more   
like a tourniquet, something to slow the massive internal   
bleeding.   
  
Was she going to toss that faith aside now that things were going   
better? She didn't want to be that kind of Christian. In the   
dark days of early 1998, she had practiced a religious orthodoxy   
that was totally foreign to her former life. She'd even dug out   
the ruby-glass and silver rosary her great aunt had given her on   
her Confirmation, a gift that had been reverently packed away in   
tissue paper and never used.   
  
She couldn't help glancing sidelong at Mulder. Sleeping with   
your sort-of-atheist, angry-at-God partner was not compatible   
with Thursday night Mass and confession every first Saturday of   
the month. When push came to shove, it was the Church she edged   
out of her life.   
  
In her heart of hearts, Scully was not convinced that God   
condemned everyone who bought a package of condoms or that the   
Blessed Virgin really needed prayers to undo the damage of   
affronts to her Immaculate Heart. But she felt a need for   
connection to a wise, benevolent Being, and she was too much a   
Catholic to worship in isolation. For her, history and tradition   
forged the connection between man and God. She seemed to be   
slowly relinquishing that connection, and it frightened her.   
  
One obvious solution was simply to get married to Mulder.   
Presuming she truly repented her prior behavior, she would be a   
Catholic in good standing again. She felt little doubt that   
Mulder *would* agree to marry her, at least once he regained his   
emotional balance -- or whatever passed for balance in his   
peculiar psyche. Yet something in her sensed that rushing into   
marriage was not the best way to serve Mulder or God.   
  
Perhaps her problem was that she had never given all of herself   
to anything or anyone -- except Emily, who had left Scully's life   
almost as soon as she entered it.   
  
In her current situation she could use Mulder to distance herself   
from God and God to distance herself from Mulder. How convenient.   
How safe.   
  
Jesus had not held back anything. This week marked the   
anniversary of the day he gave his life, and she was afraid to   
give even her whole heart? But she was a human woman, not God.   
She looked on emotional self-immolation with terror.  
  
She sighed deeply and lifted one of Mulder's hands from the   
steering wheel, pressed his knuckles to her lips.   
  
"You all right?" he asked, probably surprised at the   
uncharacteristic impulsiveness of her act.   
  
"I'm fine," she said softly. Lies like that kept him from   
getting too close.  
  
***** 


	4. resurgam4

Their destination was the Captain Nehemiah Nye House, an inn   
near the Wesquobsque Cliffs in Chilmark. Mulder had explained   
that it was less than a mile from the scene of Kristie's death,   
but Scully was still surprised and dismayed to find its gravel   
parking lot entirely filled with police vehicles. Few of the   
cars were marked, but the ramming bars and whip antennas were   
dead giveaways.   
  
Mulder ended up parking near a flooded ditch alongside the road.   
At least it had mostly stopped raining by the time they got out   
of the car.   
  
"I know the family that runs this place, or at least I used to.   
We'll see if that helps," he said.   
  
Nye House turned out to be like something out of a Jane Austen   
novel. The lobby had clearly once been Captain Nye's drawing   
room, and it was arranged much as he must have left it. The   
small cast-iron stove that once heated the room still stood in   
one corner, and the furniture arranged in the waiting area had   
the light, streamlined style favored in the early 19th century.   
A shining brass ship's clock hung on one blue-and-gray papered   
wall. It was almost exactly how Scully would have decorated her   
own home if she'd had a lot more money and rather less   
practicality.  
  
At the far end of the room sat a light secretaire desk, its   
surface covered in mounds of paper. Scully noted the key rack   
hanging on the wall beside the desk was entirely empty. Mulder   
walked up and rang the hand bell anyway. After a moment a stout   
lady with short, salt-and-pepper curls came in through the room's   
rear door. "Do you have a reservation?" she asked.  
  
Mulder fished his Bureau ID out of his inner coat pocket and held   
it out to her. The woman's back stiffened. "I'm sorry, but I've   
told everything I know more than once. You people really have to   
start talking to one another. I have a business to run here."   
  
"Leigh," Mulder said.   
  
Leigh's glasses magnified her brown eyes, which made her look   
owlish when she blinked at him. She took another look at the ID,   
glanced at Mulder's face, and her eyes went even wider.  
  
"Well, *hello!* Why didn't you tell me you were coming? It's been   
so long -- here I was thinking you were another one of these   
mainland detectives. I'm just about embarrassed to death," she   
said. She walked around the desk and hugged him. To Scully's   
surprise, he returned the embrace without awkwardness. In her   
experience, he was uncomfortable with physical affection in all   
but the most intimate relationships.   
  
"I didn't know I was coming until just a few hours ago," Mulder   
said.   
  
Leigh stepped back and said, "Then you heard?" Mulder nodded.   
  
"Isn't it awful?" Leigh said. "I still can hardly believe it --   
that poor girl. The Island's really changed for the worse, Fox.   
More people coming and going all the time . . . some of them not   
the sort I like to see around. The traffic means more business,   
but I'd just as soon have it back the way it was 15 years ago.   
It was safer. Speaking of which, it must've been at least that   
long since I last saw you."  
  
"More like 20 years ago," Mulder said. "The last summer I spent   
here was the one before I went away to school."  
  
"Has it been that long?" Leigh asked. "It must've been. It   
must've been. Tammy was just a little thing then. Now she's   
grown with a baby of her own." Leigh seized the opportunity to   
pull a photo album from amid the clutter on the desk. "Here,   
this is a picture of my granddaughter . . ."  
  
It turned out to be more than just "a" picture, but Scully looked   
through and praised them all. Emily's death had left a dry ache   
in her that was soothed somewhat by talking about other peoples'   
babies. As a result, Leigh Williams soon had a very high opinion   
of her and was determined to find room for her and Mulder in Nye   
House.   
  
Leigh looked mildly scandalized when Mulder explained that one   
room would do fine and neither agent had to be installed in   
Tammy's old room. At that point Scully put her hand on his arm   
and drew him aside. "Maybe it would be better if we didn't stay   
together," she said quietly. "This place is crawling with police   
officers. It wouldn't reflect well on the Bureau."  
  
"The Bureau? The *Bureau?*" Mulder looked appalled. Leigh   
tactfully found something to fuss with on her desk. In a low   
voice Mulder asked, "At a time like this you're worried about   
what the Bureau would think? We're off duty. Officially, I'm not   
even here."  
  
"Nobody else knows that," Scully said. She plead for his   
understanding with her eyes, not wanting to explain in the   
earshot of others. She had not forgotten the whispers and icy   
stares of her classmates in medical school and the FBI Academy.   
  
*Scully slept her way to the top* had been the conventional   
wisdom. The fact that it wasn't true, and that at least in Jack's   
case the affair was licit, hadn't made any difference. There   
weren't many new lows for her career to sink to, but Scully   
didn't want to see a look of delighted disgust in her colleagues'   
eyes. The look that said, "I don't have to respect you now, and   
I'm glad."   
  
"Fine," Mulder said. "Whatever."  
  
"I'd be glad to stay in your daughter's room, Mrs. Williams,"   
Scully said. Leigh clearly thought Scully had fallen from   
heaven.   
  
Mulder looked as if the whole conversation made him want   
to wash.  
  
**********  
  
Upstairs in his room, Mulder tossed his few packed belongings   
onto the shelves of the armoire, mostly for an excuse to slam the   
doors. He knew that he was more upset at Scully than the   
situation really warranted.   
  
So she wanted to sleep downstairs. So what? It would be no   
different than when they were working -- which in fact Scully was.  
  
No, this *was* different. He needed her, and she cared about the   
Bureau's opinion of their personal life? "Why are you   
surprised?" he asked himself aloud. He dropped down on the bed   
and pressed his hands to his aching eyes. Scully had always been   
skittish around issues of authority. She'd flouted rules to come   
through for him before, but only after justifying herself by   
appealing to her conception of a higher law. Apparently the   
current situation wasn't worthy of such an exception.  
  
//Were you so stupid that you thought she'd change just because   
she started sleeping with you?// Such a hope was truly pathetic   
-- the mindset of a neurotic fifteen-year-old. The only response   
his exhausted mind could offer was, //But I love her.//   
  
If he'd learned anything during the last several months, it was   
that love, for all its virtues, was powerless to affect the   
actions of the beloved. Christina Mulder, beloved mother, had   
taken her own life without so much as mentioning her terminal   
illness to her son. Kristie Herron, beloved daughter, had chosen   
a dangerous life amid the drug culture of Boston that might have directly or   
indirectly led to her death. Scully would do what she would do,   
and his choices were to walk away or hang on and hope for the  
best. Really, it was no choice at all. "You could at least try   
to meet me closer to halfway," he said aloud.   
  
He lay down, and hypnagogic images swam before him when he shut   
his eyes. He saw faces mouthing incomprehensible words. He   
hadn't had any more sleep than Scully had, and his mind was   
considerably more troubled. When he fell asleep it was to   
unsettling dreams -- a horror stalked him through familiar   
rooms. The thing itself was never seen, but he recognized   
the sound of its slow footfalls as it followed him through   
the empty house. Whatever it was had been with him a long time.  
  
It was dark when the phone's ringing startled him awake. He'd   
developed a horrific headache in his sleep and he groaned as he   
reached over to pick up the receiver. "Hello?"  
  
"Fox?" came a woman's voice. Mulder struggled to place it.  
  
"Yeah?" he said.  
  
"It's Patty," the woman said. Moments from the past, sharp and   
fragmented, spilled through his mind: a long, shining wave of   
chestnut hair; a young woman's soft laugh; a green-and-white   
bicycle with reddish Vineyard clay caught in its tire treads.   
  
"Patty . . . How are you?" He regretted the words as soon as   
he'd spoken them. //How do you think she is?//   
  
"You heard?" she asked. He knew the emotion behind her nearly   
calm voice. Grief left a person like the softened walls in many   
of the Island's oldest buildings, where cracks in the plaster merely   
hinted at the disintegration of the concrete behind. One touch   
and the whole structure would crumble.  
  
"I heard. I'm sorry," he said.  
  
"I don't understand it. She was fine. She'd had a little   
trouble and she was doing so well . . ." Her words fluttered up   
and up, like frightened birds before a storm.   
  
"Do you want me to go over there?" Mulder said.  
  
"It's late, Fox -- no," she said.  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"No," she said, very quietly.  
  
"Give me twenty minutes," Mulder said.  
  
*************  
  
Scully was lying on the narrow bed, resting her eyes. The rooms   
the Williams family lived in were near the surprisingly modern   
kitchen, in what Scully suspected had once been the maids'   
quarters. Tammy's room was quite small and her mother had   
apologized, explaining that lodging would be gratis if Scully   
chose to stay. The little room lacked the romance of the guest   
areas, but she found something soothing about the teen-girl   
furnishings.  
  
She was a good ten years older than Tammy, but the peeling   
posters of 80's pop icons, the grainy photos of prom night and   
graduation tucked into the mirror frame above the vanity, could   
have come from one of her own college dorm rooms. She remembered   
a time when she'd had girlfriends, before shadowy men and the   
terrible light that haunted her dreams made her too afraid to   
befriend anyone. For a few moments between sleep and waking, she   
felt her sister's presence very near.  
  
Minutes later Mulder knocked on the door. It had to be Mulder.   
In hotels, strangers had a polite little knock -- an I-hope-I'm-  
not-disturbing-you knock. Mulder just gave the door two sharp   
raps, the knock of a person who believes he has the right to   
enter, but knocks anyway for good manners' sake. "Hang on,"   
Scully said groggily. She rolled off the bed onto her stocking   
feet. When she opened the door the light in the hall seemed too   
bright, and she squinted up at her partner. He had his coat on.   
"What is it?" she asked.  
  
"I'm going over to the Herrons'," he said.  
  
She knew it was as close to an invitation as she was going to   
get. She glanced back at the bedside clock and saw it was after   
ten. "Now? You want me to talk about the autopsy results?" she   
asked.  
  
"No," he said. She waited for further explanation and got none.   
He just wanted her presence.  
  
"Let me find my shoes . . ." she said. She'd been dumb enough to   
bring nearly-new shoes and she felt all the tight spots as her   
feet slid back into them. In her head, she heard what her sister   
would say: //Why do you follow him around like that? If Mulder   
jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it too?//   
Then she heard her own answer, //Probably.//   
  
Scully fought to repress a smile that was completely   
inappropriate for a condolence call. Mulder clearly saw it  
anyway.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
"Nothing," she said, lifting her still-damp jacket from where it   
lay folded over the vanity chair. "Let's go."   
  
Scully did not know what to expect as they pulled up outside the   
secluded house near Menemsha Harbor. Like many houses she'd seen   
on the western part of the island, the Herron's unpaved driveway   
wound quite a distance into the trees -- or maybe it was unclear   
where the driveway started and the dirt road stopped. Scully was   
a little surprised at how undeveloped much of the land was. When   
Mulder had told her his parents were next door when his sister   
was abducted, she'd thought of "next door" in terms of the   
cramped military housing units of her own youth. Here, "next   
door" was not within the shouting distance of a young boy. The  
knowledge helped bring home to her how alone and helpless   
Mulder had felt as a 12-year-old all those years before.  
  
Scully used the porch mat to scrape red, clayey mud off her shoes   
while Mulder rang the doorbell. She heard footsteps inside, and   
a young man's face appeared briefly in the door's window. There   
was no sound of a latch being undone before the door opened.   
The boy in the doorway looked about 17 or 18, tall but still   
gangly. His hard, red-rimmed eyes seemed incongruous in his   
youthful face. That was the magic of grief -- overnight it could   
make a high school boy look like a bitter old man.  
  
"Yeah?" the boy said.  
  
"I'm Fox Mulder. I'm here to see Patty," Mulder said.   
  
The boy closed the door. Scully heard him shout, "Mom!"  
  
"Wonderful kid," Mulder muttered.   
  
"He's just lost his sister," Scully said, then realized how   
churlish it sounded to imply he didn't know what that was like.   
He kept his eyes on the door as if he hadn't heard.   
  
The misting rain was deceptively fine. The air clung like a damp   
sponge. In the short amount of time they stood on the porch,   
Scully began to feel wet all the way through and very cold.   
Soon the door was opened again, this time by a tall woman,   
perhaps ten years older than Mulder. "Fox," she said.  
  
"Hi, Patty," Mulder said.   
  
"Come in -- I'm sorry," Patty said, stepping aside to let them   
into the warm house. She called out to her unseen son, "Matthew,   
what's the matter with you? Why did you let them stand out in   
the rain?" There was no reply. "He's upset," she explained. "I   
think the boys are looking for someone to blame -- it's hard with   
the police investigation up in the air. Maybe they blame me, I   
don't know."  
  
Scully tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she didn't   
feel very reassuring. How many times had she played this exact   
role -- a bearer of bad news, intruding on other people's grief.  
  
Once they were all in the foyer, Scully noted a brief moment of   
awkwardness between Mulder and Patty. Apparently they were not   
so close that an embrace felt natural, but under the   
circumstances a handshake would have been barbarous. Patty   
reached out her arm, almost apologetically, as to a sympathetic   
stranger. Mulder took it and pulled her against him. Suddenly   
all strangeness between them was gone. She cried into his   
shoulder, and he spoke to her all the half-nonsense words that   
Scully had murmured to him so often since his mother's death:   
"You'll be all right. You'll be okay. You'll get through this."  
  
"I won't. I'll never be all right. You don't know what it's   
like to lose a child. It's like dying every second," Patty said.  
  
Scully knew what it was like. It was a memory she wanted to   
distance herself from. She walked a few paces down a narrow   
hallway defined by the staircase wall on one side and the kitchen   
wall on the other. Framed photographs hung on both sides, but   
the dim overhead light consigned many of them to obscurity. It   
was just as well -- it helped Scully avoid the eyes of the Herron   
children, young and smiling beneath plates of dusty glass.   
  
She stopped before a picture of the young Patty Herron -- Patty   
Todd, Mulder had called her, the girl Fox and Samantha had known.   
She was quite pretty -- brown hair like a smooth autumn river   
framed a shield-shaped face and brown eyes. The picture was from   
the bust up, but Scully guessed Patty had had the sort of lanky,   
athletic figure that Mulder preferred. She imagined him as a   
too-tall grade-schooler, smitten with the pretty teen girl who   
thought of herself as his babysitter. Scully wondered how he had   
felt the day Kristie was born, the day Patty tied herself   
irrevocably to the adult world, and to an adult man.   
  
She heard the creak of a floorboard as someone entered the hall.   
She looked up to see a tall young man whose brown eyes were the   
image of the young Patty Herron's. The lower half of his face   
was obscured by what was probably the first real beard he'd been   
able to grow. "You're Dr. Scully?" he asked. There was a touch   
of challenge in his voice.  
  
"Yes," Scully said. "Mr. --"  
  
"Herron. I'm Rich Herron," the man said. "You did the autopsy?"  
  
"Yes," she said. Mr. Herron, I'm very sorry for your loss. This   
must be a difficult time--"  
  
He seemed barely to have heard her. "How did my sister die?" he   
asked.   
  
Scully knew the hopeless quest of a murder victim's relatives --   
the desperate search for answers which brought no comfort. "She   
fell," Scully said. "She died from a head injury. It was   
instantaneous; she felt no pain--"  
  
"The police said she was stabbed. Now she fell? Nobody is   
giving us a straight answer," Rich said.  
  
In defense Scully went into investigator mode. "It's really very   
early in the investigation. The police need time to be thorough-  
-"  
  
"Rich, please," Patty called. She appeared at the other   
end of the hall, wiping her eyes with her fingers. "Please come   
sit down -- I'm sorry," she said to Scully, gesturing toward   
the living room on the other side of the staircase.   
  
Scully followed her, trying not to feel the weight of Rich   
Herron's glare. Once in the living room, she down on the   
end of a blue-and-white flowered couch. A defeated-looking   
Matthew sat on a smaller couch with his hands clasped on   
his knees. On a table beside him were a few nautical-themed   
knickknacks, including a model of a Banks schooner -- once an  
emblem of New England. Sailor's daughter that she was,   
Scully's attention was drawn to the other model ships in the   
room: an old-fashioned three-masted frigate, a second schooner,  
and a sleeker modern racing yacht. The pictures on the walls   
were of ocean views, except for one that   
showed the smiling Herrons on a dock, all wearing matching polo   
shirts and navy slacks -- a work uniform. The family must have a   
business near the harbor.  
  
Mulder sat down next to her and put his hand over hers. His   
touch felt very warm and she realized she was still chilled   
through from the night outside. Reflexively she glanced up to   
see if anyone noticed the display of intimacy. Matthew met her   
eyes without showing any particular interest. //Let it go,// she   
told herself. There was being a private person, and there was   
being paranoid. If she was too reticent to be close to Mulder in   
public, he'd think she was ashamed of him. Still, it felt very   
strange to sit holding his hand in front of strangers.   
  
"Is there anything I can get you at all?" Patty asked, as if it   
were quite natural to play the hostess under these circumstances.  
  
Mulder's cousin Debbie had said the same thing over and over at   
his mother's hastily-arranged memorial. Mulder himself had   
refused to speak to anyone in more than monosyllables.   
  
"We're fine, Patty," Mulder said.  
  
Rich and a man who was probably his father walked into the room.   
Mark Herron couldn't have been much past his mid-fifties, but he   
moved as slowly as an old man as he sat down in an armchair.   
His hands, loose at his sides like a sleepwalkers', bore the   
nut-colored tan that old sailors never lost. Suddenly Scully was   
glad that her own father had not lived to see Melissa's murder.   
  
She looked up at Patty and said, "Mrs. Herron, I lost my own   
daughter two years ago at Christmas. You're right -- it is like   
dying every second. All I can tell you is that in time, it   
becomes more bearable." She sensed Mulder looking at her. Self-  
disclosure was hardly her usual style. Perhaps it was the somber   
mood of Lent that made her speak. Perhaps it was this family's   
connection with the sea -- she didn't know.   
  
However, for the first time, some of the terrible vacantness left   
Patty's eyes. Scully saw that her face, though heavier beneath   
her practical short haircut, was still pretty. "Thank you,"   
Patty said.   
  
Mulder pressed her hand between both of his, and she didn't pull   
away. It was as if the wind were coming from a new direction --   
suddenly she and Mulder were not the insensitive investigators,   
here to ask intrusive questions and give no information in   
return.  
  
"Dr. Scully . . . what happened to our daughter?" Mark asked.  
  
"Mr. Herron, if anybody really knows what happened to her,   
they're not cooperating with the police. All I can give you is a   
medical opinion -- a very incomplete answer," Scully said.   
  
"She says Kristie wasn't stabbed -- she fell," Rich said.  
  
"An accident?" Patty asked. She sounded almost hopeful.   
  
"I don't think so," Scully said, as gently as she could. "She   
had experienced some sharp-force injuries, probably from a knife.   
The wounds were relatively minor, but they show that she met   
someone who intended to do her harm."  
  
"She was afraid of knives," Matthew said.  
  
Mulder turned toward him, and Scully sensed a new tension through   
her partner's skin, like a slack wire suddenly drawn taught.   
Spooky had a lead. "Why do you say that?" he asked.  
  
"From watching movies with her, mostly, or hearing campfire   
stories . . . the kind about maniacs, you know . . ." Matt   
avoided mentioning "in the woods," but Scully understood, and felt   
cold inside. "When it got to the knife part she could never   
watch," Matt continued. "She'd kind of curl up and put her hands   
over her eyes. She told me once she wasn't afraid of guns,   
because getting shot was quick, but a knife would be the worst   
way to die." Patty made a soft noise as if her breath had been   
choked off.   
  
"Matt, did anybody else know she was afraid of knives?" Mulder   
asked.  
  
"I don't know . . . maybe. Probably. She used to go to the   
horror movies when they came out, you know, but at the knife   
parts she'd turn away. Some guys like that -- when a girl gets   
scared," Matthew said.  
  
"Did she often date guys who liked it when she got scared?"   
Mulder asked.   
  
Scully watched the family's reactions as they made the   
connection. Mark and Patty glanced at one another. "We didn't   
like a lot of the boys she saw -- off-islanders, mostly, party   
guys," Mark said. "Some of these people have a lifestyle you   
wouldn't believe."  
  
"They're not all bad just because they have money," Matthew said.  
  
"I don't care -- I didn't want them hanging around my daughter,"   
Mark snapped. "We had her working with us down at the marina   
during the summers, and she'd meet these guys when they brought   
their boats in. They'd start giving her that oily smile, and I'd   
try to discourage them . . . I suppose that just made them more   
attractive to her. Maybe we should have taken her out of the   
boathouse altogether. She wanted to spend those six weeks in   
Alaska -- do you remember?" He glanced up at Patty.  
  
Patty did not meet his eyes. She said, "Mark . . ."   
  
Mark Herron's wave of pain was palpable. Scully did not look at   
him, and she sensed that others did not either, until he cleared  
his throat and said, "Anyway . . . we didn't let her go. We   
needed her here, or we thought we did. And then . . . then she   
was gone, and there was nothing we could do." He pressed his   
great, square hand over his eyes and wept.  
  
Scully felt sympathy warring with embarrassment for how the man   
must feel, or perhaps it was for how a man like her father would   
have felt if he cried in front of strangers. From respect as   
much as discomfort, she kept her gaze on the toes of her shoes.   
Mulder did not seem to feel awkward. He, more than any man she'd   
known, was comfortable in the presence of people in tears. He   
pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it, but was   
ignored.  
  
Patty stooped to put her arm around her husband's shoulders,   
their heads pressed together. The Herron brothers were still   
and silent, Rich standing like a guardian behind the couch where   
Matthew sat. They were circling the wagons, as Scully's own   
family had -- as Mulder's strangely had not at his mother's   
memorial. Teena Mulder's wake had not been so much a gathering   
of the clans as a collection of grieving persons who all just   
happened to be in the same room.   
  
At last Mark said, "I'm sorry," then got up and walked out of the   
room. A spell seemed to have been broken. Both Rich and Matthew   
immediately left as well, one heading for the kitchen and one   
walking upstairs. Patty dropped down into the chair her husband   
had just vacated.   
  
"Are you sure it gets better?" she asked Scully.  
  
"I turned to God," Scully said. "It helped a little."   
  
"Patty, I know you've been over this before, but is there   
anything, or anyone, that stands out in your memory as being   
possibly related to Kristie's death?" Mulder asked.  
  
Patty shook her head slowly. "There was Brian Griffin, the man   
she was dating when they were arrested, but they convicted him   
under the three strikes law. He's doing life in prison. She   
was going to testify in the trial of John McBer, and I've told   
the police all I know about him, which isn't much. I didn't   
think this new boyfriend, Randy, was much of a step up from   
Brian, but he never seemed threatening at all. These last few   
months were so ordinary, Fox. So relatively normal. I wouldn't   
let myself hope at first. She'd quit drugs and relapsed before -  
- she'd never made it past 90 days. But when three months   
passed, and then six . . . I began to hope. I thought, 'She's   
finally making it. God wouldn't take her from us now.' I guess   
that shows you how much I knew."  
  
"Unlike Agent Scully, I tend *not* to turn to God when things get   
bad," Mulder said. "It's kind of like wearing a huge 'Kick Me'   
sign on your back."   
  
Scully worked not to take offense at his comment. He made it no   
secret that he thought organized religion in general was stupid   
and Christianity even more so. She was aware that he had his   
reasons. Still, it wouldn't kill him to show her faith a little   
respect.  
  
Scully looked up at Patty and said, "Kristie died drug-free, Mrs.   
Herron. At least God let her have that victory."   
  
"Thank him for that," Patty said. Some of the tension seemed to   
leave her body, but it left her looking even more broken and   
vulnerable. Scully remembered the days after she lost Emily, and   
wondered if tension wasn't all that was keeping Patty together.   
  
"We don't want to overstay our welcome, but would you mind if I   
looked around just a little bit?" Mulder asked.  
  
"You're welcome to, but the detectives turned the place upside-  
down," Patty said. "I went over her room again myself, looking   
at every scrap of paper I could find for a name, a phone number .   
. . anything."   
  
"We won't stay long," Mulder assured her.  
  
At his request Patty led them upstairs to what had been Kristie's   
room. Once they were there, she left them.   
  
The place had already begun to have a vacant feel, probably because  
the room had clearly been "processed." The sheets were gone,   
likely sent to Boston for hair and fiber analysis. That alone   
told Scully that the boyfriend was a suspect. Depressions in   
the beige carpet showed that every item of furniture had been   
moved and placed back slightly wrong. A few small, everyday   
traces remained of Kristie's life: two empty kitchen glasses   
on the desk near a fist-sized clutch of keys; a book splayed   
open under the bed, a smiley face, clearly old, painted with   
nail polish on the side of a bookshelf.  
  
Mulder started poking around in the bookshelf. Scully stood out   
of his way near the door. Before long she was leaning against   
the door frame, repressing an urge to slide down onto the floor   
and close her eyes. When she'd volunteered to help, she'd had   
no idea this case would be so exhausting or emotionally   
harrowing. The fact that Mulder was taking such an active   
interest in the investigation when he wasn't even part of it was   
starting to irritate her. "What are you looking for?" she asked.   
When he didn't answer immediately, she added, "Don't tell me,   
Let me guess. You don't know."   
  
"Okay, You can guess. I won't tell you," he said.  
  
The silence stretched on. Scully looked at her watch. "It's   
nearly midnight," she said. "We should let these people get some   
sleep."  
  
"Give me two more minutes," Mulder said. He was pulling out each   
of the books on the bookshelf and examining their spines. In   
Mulder terms, "two minutes" could be interminable, so Scully gave   
up and began pulling out books too.   
  
"Tell me what I'm looking for," she said.  
  
"A book where the dust jacket doesn't match the book inside," he   
said.  
  
The third book she pulled out had a jacket that was slightly too   
tall, causing the paper to be crushed back over the cover. "You   
mean like this?" she asked. She slipped the jacket of an   
English-French dictionary off the book, and revealed the words,   
"Narcotics Anonymous" stamped in gold on the cover.  
  
"Nice shooting, Tex," Mulder said. "A lot of recovering addicts   
don't like to be seen carrying this around. Even some ex-  
alcoholics look down on the guys trying to kick coke or heroin.   
That's why you see decorative book covers or things like this."   
He took the book from her and opened it. Inside the front cover   
were dozens of names and phone numbers written in a rainbow   
assortment of ballpoint pen ink. One name, Brenda, was circled   
with a star next to it.   
  
Mulder flipped the page and found a note on the other side:   
"Happy 6 month anniversary, baby! Never forget we're   
powerless. Love, Randy."  
  
"Joey'll love this," Mulder asked.   
  
"You're hot all right," she said. He continued to page through   
the book. Scully asked, "Can we go now?" He looked down at her,   
seemed hesitant. The discovery had revived his spirit and   
energy, and she knew he would have happily worked through the   
night. "It's late," she said. "I *am* going to church tomorrow."  
  
"Right -- right, okay," Mulder said, folding the book closed. To   
his credit, he said goodbye to Patty and drove Scully back to   
Nye House without betraying any resentment. But he was quiet on   
the slow, jostling ride through the rain. Scully thought she   
knew what he was thinking. Their work as FBI partners was as   
seamless as it could be, but to become true partners in a   
personal sense would require a lot of sacrifice and effort.   
  
When they got back to the inn he did not press her to come   
upstairs with him, and she was glad. She needed time to sit with   
her thoughts and center herself. Exchanging her damp wool   
blazer and skirt for her pajamas was like striking off a ball and   
chain. As she returned from brushing her teeth in the Williams   
family's bathroom, she ran into Leigh. The little proprietress   
was more than happy to give her a tourist guide that showed the   
locations of various island churches. St. Paul of Tarsus in   
Vineyard Haven seemed to be marginally the most convenient, and   
Scully set her sights on the 11:30 service, somewhat less than 12   
hours away.   
  
Perhaps it was weariness that clouded her judgment, or else a   
deep ache for the glow of the Presence candle at Mass, but   
something impelled her to slip back into the bathroom and remove   
the little tea light in a glass bowl that was serving as a night   
light. Cradling it in both hands, she carried it back to her   
room and set it on the dresser. When she turned out the electric   
light, the mirror on the dresser reflected the little candle's   
illumination, doubling it. Candlelight is the kindest of lights,   
and Scully was briefly surprised by her own image in the mirror.   
The half-light showed her skin smooth and translucent as a young   
girl's, and it lent a jewel-like depth to her eyes. The   
reflected face seemed to have come from another time. It was   
certainly worlds away from the Agent Scully who worked under the   
unforgiving glare of florescent bulbs, often up to her elbows in   
a body that even wild dogs would avoid.   
  
She turned away from the haunting image in the mirror. It was no   
more she than the unflattering photo on her Bureau ID was. She   
fished out of her purse the little cloth bag containing the   
rosary her great-aunt had given her many years ago. She lay   
down on the bed and opened the bag. The ruby-glass beads   
spilled out into her hand like so many little drops of blood.   
Some small, prideful part of her was still embarrassed to be   
carrying this symbol of Catholicism's medieval legacy. The   
modern Church, the 21st century Church, had a renewed confidence   
in science and scholarship. The orthodox faithful were engaged   
in debates about world politics and biomedical ethics at the   
highest levels. That was a faith you could proclaim in public.   
The soft rattle of beads and whispered prayers in the dark were   
like the presence of an eccentric elderly relative -- something   
that could neither be disavowed nor discussed with outsiders.   
  
And yet, and yet . . . . There was something very soothing about   
the simple, repeated prayers. Mulder, and Melissa, for that   
matter, had pointed out the rosary's similarities to Buddhist   
prayer beads and the practice of chanting the Sanskrit name of   
the Lotus Sutra. The comparison used to annoy her, but after   
having experienced a profound sense of the Divine in a Buddhist   
Temple, it no longer did so. If the Christian "peace which   
passeth all understanding" was related to the Buddhist   
Enlightenment, then so much the better for Christians and   
Buddhists.   
  
She ran her thumbs over the tarnished silver crucifix, trying   
to come up with some profound prayer intention that fit her   
somber assignment and the season. Eloquence failed her, and   
the best she could do was offer up an anguished identification   
with Mary as the mother of a murdered child. More in emotions  
than words, she asked God to take care of Emily, Melissa,   
Kristie, and Kristie's poor baby, born too soon. Suddenly   
it occurred to her to add to the list the murdered children of  
Mary Brown, purported South Road Ghost. The thought surprised   
her, since she'd almost forgotten about the story that brought  
her and Mulder out here in the first place.   
  
Maybe it was the primitive glory of the candlelight that inspired   
her, or the fact that the wind had picked up outside and was   
making a thin screaming noise in the trees. In any case, her   
thoughts called up disturbing images. Scully crossed herself and   
began a whispered recitation of the Creed of Nicea, more   
beautiful than the shorter Apostles' Creed: // . . . God from   
God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made   
. . .//   
  
The more than 36 hours she'd gone without good sleep caught up   
with her quickly. The last thoughts she had before   
unconsciousness claimed her were the Creed's final words: //We   
look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world   
to come.//  
  
Something awakened her deep in the night. Scully lay with her   
heart pounding, her hands gripping the sheets. The candle had   
gone out and the room was in darkness. A dream? No -- she had   
the dim awareness of a sensation, a sound, that had awakened her.   
She remembered the look of calm, inexorable madness on Donnie   
Pfaster's face, and fought panic. Where had she put her weapon?   
On the chair by the desk -- too far to reach. Had someone   
entered the room and picked it up, ready to use it against her?  
  
She heard stumbling footsteps outside in the hall. "Power's out.   
Where's the damn flashlight? I thought you lit the candle in   
here, Leigh."  
  
"I did," Leigh said.   
  
Scully glanced up at the dresser. What had possessed her to take   
the candle from the bathroom?   
  
"Here -- Jim, don't just walk into things, stand still. The   
flashlight's up in the cabinet somewhere."  
  
Scully had a small flashlight attached to her keys. Where were   
they? Then she heard the noise that had awakened her -- a   
shriek, high-pitched and far away, but human and terrified beyond   
reason. The cry trailed up and up, past the range of a woman's   
voice and far past that of a man's.   
  
//Oh, God, it's a child.// She rolled out of bed and onto her   
feet, finding her keys and the flashlight on the desk by touch.  
With the light on she could see to open her bag and pull out   
clothes. She pulled pants and a jacket on over her pajamas and   
stuffed her feet into her autopsy shoes, which were easier to   
run in than heels. Finally she clipped her gun onto her   
waistband and strode out the door.   
  
"Agent Scully?" she heard Leigh call.  
  
"There's somebody out in the storm -- I think it's a child.   
Tell Agent Mulder. He'll know what to do," Scully called back.   
She didn't stop to answer more questions as she walked through   
the front room and out the door.   
  
The damp iciness of the wind nearly took her breath away. She   
could see pellets of sleet in the narrow beam of her flashlight.   
A moment of indecision seized her -- should she wait for help?   
This was no night to become lost. She glanced up at the inn,   
thought of Mulder and the other officers in there. There were no   
lights in any of the windows. As she hesitated she heard the cry   
again, and that answered her question.   
  
The sound seemed to be carried on the wind, which was coming from   
the south. Holding her jacket closed with one hand and her   
little flashlight with the other, Scully set off across the   
sleet-encrusted meadow behind Nye House, heading toward the   
cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean.   
  
***** 


	5. resurgam5

Mulder was having a bad night. Once the rush of starting a new   
investigation wore off, the miserable familiarity of his   
surroundings began to weigh on him. The power outage denied him   
even the dubious pleasure of watching late-night TV as he lay in   
bed. In darkness and silence, he was prey to his memories. The   
last time he'd been on this island was when he'd inadvertently   
set Roche loose. The time before that was the night his father   
was murdered. His soul yearned for Scully and for his mother   
with a dual intensity that would have warmed the twisted heart   
of Sigmund Freud.   
  
It still surprised him that losing his mother was a heavier blow   
than learning his sister was dead. It was the way his mother   
died, really.   
  
Teena Mulder had gone to the grave organized -- he'd give   
her that much. She'd contacted a lawyer to help her get the right   
papers signed and the disposition of her estate all planned out.   
The nurse who'd come to the house during her final days even knew   
what clothes she wanted to be laid out in. The one conspicuous   
lapse was her failure to inform her son that she intended to kill   
herself -- or even that she was sick. He was angry at her --   
in truth he was furious, and that was what was killing him. She   
had no right to shut him out of the end of her life, as she'd   
shut him out of so many things she wanted to keep secret. She   
hadn't even trusted him to pick where she'd be buried. Maybe she   
expected that he wouldn't show up at her funeral, since he had   
missed his father's.   
  
Scully insisted that his mother had been trying not to burden   
him, that the over-planned suicide wasn't the rejection it   
seemed. Maybe she was right. Still, he doubted he could have   
been hurt more if his mother had actually tried to kill him   
instead.  
  
This morbid train of thought was disturbed by someone banging on   
his door. "What?" he called out.  
  
"Fox?" it was Leigh. "Fox, we've lost power due to the storm.   
Your partner says that she can hear someone lost out there, and   
she's going to help. She said you'd know what to do . . ."  
  
Mulder got up and walked to the door in his T-shirt and boxer   
shorts. He opened the door and found Leigh there, holding a   
flashlight and looking small and owlish in her bathrobe.   
  
"She didn't go out there by herself, did she?" Mulder asked.   
  
"I think so. I don't know. She seemed to be in a hurry," Leigh   
said.  
  
"Do you know which direction she went in?" Mulder asked. He did   
not like the idea of Scully wandering the countryside in this   
storm. The up-island terrain was difficult enough under the best   
of circumstances.  
  
Leigh shook her head. "She just took her flashlight and left.   
She didn't look dressed properly for the weather," she said.  
  
Mulder swore. "Thanks for telling me. See if you can get Joey   
on the phone and ask him to send some people who actually know   
their way around the woods out here," he said.  
  
"All right. What are you going to do?" she asked.  
  
"I'm going to go find my partner before--" he stopped himself   
from mentioning the state of poor Kristie's remains after she'd   
fallen over the cliff. "I'm just going to find her."   
  
*****  
  
Scully struggled down a steep wooded hill about a mile from Nye   
House. The heavy clay soil was little more than half-frozen mud,   
and her feet were continually sliding. After considering the   
odds of a predator being loose in the woods, she carried her gun   
in her right hand. She'd put away her flashlight to free her   
other hand for holding onto saplings and branches as she walked.   
  
At first she'd heard the child's cries on every strong gust of   
wind from the south, but as she traveled the voice seemed to grow   
more distant. Now she was unsure if she were following a human   
voice at all. The wind keening in the bare branches could sound   
human to someone who wanted to hear signs of life badly enough.   
  
She made maddeningly slow progress down the hill as she picked   
her way from tree to tree. It occurred to her that she might be   
better off if she sat on her butt and slid.   
  
Unexpectedly, she got her wish. A rock rolled under her shoe,   
then the muddy earth beneath her feet began to give way. She   
grabbed the closest tree -- a dead pine sapling. The trunk   
cracked off and fell with her.   
  
Sliding and tumbling amid a hail of earth and stones, Scully   
shielded her head with her left arm as best she could. Branches   
scratched her and mud-clotted leaves struck her face as she tried   
desperately to keep the barrel of her gun pointed away from her   
body. The weapon was ready to fire, a bullet lying in the   
chamber.  
  
Her other worry was a great tree trunk, directly in her path.   
She scrabbled at the soil for a root, a stone, anything, but   
could get no purchase. When she hit the trunk a flash of sparks   
dazzled her eyes, and her breath was driven out of her. Dimly,   
she was aware of the little dead pine landing on her back. For a   
moment she swum in darkness.  
  
She lay dazed in the icy mud, feeling a dull pain in her ribs   
with every breath. Several seconds passed before she became   
aware that her hand was touching something warm and damp. Scully   
struggled to look up. Among the pine's branches were eyes, too   
close together to be human, shining yellow in the faint,   
directionless glow of the sleety night. The creature whined.   
  
She realized she lay beside a wet animal -- a large dog, its ears   
laid back and its belly pressed to the ground in terror. She   
felt its muscles tense at her movement. Suddenly the dog turned   
and bolted, showering her with wet leaves. Shaken, she watched   
it tear away up the slope in the direction she had come.  
  
Some irrational inner voice whispered that she'd come to a bad   
place, an uncanny place. Scully firmly pushed that thought out   
of her mind. Not even Mulder thought there were ghosts here.   
There might be violent people and treacherous footing in these   
woods, but the place itself was ordinary.   
  
She could just imagine what Mulder would say if he were here.   
//You practically killed yourself and all you have to show for   
it is a traumatized dog. Terrific.// She rolled painfully   
to her knees, then with an effort she stood up and combed the   
filth out of her hair with her fingers.   
  
Scully pulled her flashlight from her pocket and hunted for her   
gun, which the impact had jerked from her hand. Before long   
she saw the glint of metal in the flashlight's beam. She   
picked up her mud-covered SIG near the foot of the hill, and   
did what she could to clean the dirt out of its barrel. Her   
stiff, shaking fingers were not suited to the job.   
  
She was peripherally aware of plastic tape flapping and rattling   
on the nearby trees. In her near-exhausted state the noise   
didn't seem important, but eventually the rustling sound   
triggered associations -- the tinny static of two-way radios, the   
staccato lightning of flashbulbs. She shone her light at the   
trees. Their trunks were bound with yellow crime scene tape.  
  
This was where Kristie Herron had died. Scully had not expected   
to be this close to the cliffs. How close had she come to the   
edge without noticing? She hesitated, considered waiting for   
Mulder to catch up before continuing. Even if the woods hadn't   
been physically dangerous, she would still have to consider the   
possible damage to evidence if she blundered around in the   
cordoned-off area. She had just about made up her mind to wait   
when she caught the sound of ragged sobbing, carried on the wind.   
This time she was sure her ears were not deceiving her. The   
noise was human.  
  
"I'm Agent Scully with the FBI. I'm here to help. Where are   
you?" she called. Her side ached with the effort of shouting.  
  
She got a response -- a word with long, drawn-out vowels, she   
thought it was "Mama." The accent was on the second syllable,   
giving the cry an oddly foreign sound. Did the child speak   
English? Mulder had mentioned the Vineyard's Portuguese   
population. It didn't matter. The caller's grief and despair   
were plain. No mother, much less one who had lost her only   
child, could hear such a sound and be still.   
  
"Keep talking, sweetheart, I'm coming," Scully said. She ducked   
under the crime scene tape and passed into the shadows of the   
trees. She kept speaking as she walked, trying to encourage   
the child to make some sound, any sound. Privately she prayed   
that her fall had done nothing to jam the workings of the SIG.   
She couldn't shake the feeling that the dog beneath the tree had   
been frightened by something else before she nearly ran over it.   
Thinking back, she realized that its eyes had not been on her at   
all. It had been staring past her, at something in these woods   
at the bottom of the hill.  
  
*****  
  
Mulder strode across the frozen field, his Mag Lite casting a   
powerful beam ahead of him. Scully's trail was fairly easy to   
follow. The line of broken grass stalks and depressions in the   
sleet-covered ground led straight toward the South Road Burying   
Ground, and beyond that the cliffs. Every so often he'd hunt up   
three rocks and place them in an arrow indicating the direction   
he'd gone in. Joey, who'd once played a long-suffering Tonto to   
Mulder's Lone Ranger, would be able to follow those signs.   
  
Mulder couldn't figure out what had possessed his partner to do   
something this foolish. A traveler lost in the woods? Why didn't   
she call 911? Why didn't she walk up the goddamn stairs where a   
dozen peace officers were sleeping, one of whom had spent the   
first 12 years of his life running around these very woods? If   
Scully had not been the least supernaturally-inclined woman ever  
born, he would have suspected her Irish sailor's blood of   
succumbing to the glamour of the Lorelei -- spirits that haunted   
cliffs by the sea and lured men to their destruction.   
  
This had to be about Emily. Leigh had said she thought Scully   
mentioned something about a child. She'd acted out of character   
at the Herrons' house, going out of her way to talk about her   
personal loss. At the time Mulder had been touched by her   
openness. He should have recognized that something powerful had   
to be going on beneath the surface for Scully to do something   
like that. This was somehow about Emily and God and this being   
Easter and about sleeping with Mulder and him not being the solid   
Catholic guy she'd always envisioned herself with.   
  
He increased his brisk walk to a jog as he neared the woods. He   
didn't need to fool around analyzing her trail; it was as   
straight as a beeline. She was headed for the place where   
Kristie had been murdered. He supposed that was logical in a   
certain way, if Scully was worried that someone else was in   
danger from the same predator.   
  
Yet the long-time paranormal investigator in him was uneasy that   
her track was as straight as a line on a surveyor's map. There   
was a packed-dirt bicycle path that went roughly in the direction   
she wanted to go, but she had walked straight across it without   
swerving. //Don't let this be another Skyland Mountain . . .//   
Mulder thought.   
  
Memories returned unbidden. He recalled sitting across a Stratego   
board from his sister, bickering about what to watch on TV. A light   
came through the window, casting long shadows behind the game   
pieces. Samantha looked up, puzzled . . .  
  
He shook his head, refusing to be drawn *there* of all places,   
but some part of his mind wouldn't let the image go. Mulder   
plead with it:  
  
//That was a long time ago.//  
  
//Your neighbors all thought Chilmark was too insignificant for   
paranormal events to occur there, too.//  
  
//This is different! There's nothing *in* the South Road Burying   
Ground.//  
  
//Before November 27, 1973, there was nothing in your living   
room, either.//  
  
Mulder broke into a run.  
  
  
*****  
  
Scully pressed through a dense area of the forest. The rain had   
not washed away all the snow here, and she found herself walking   
up to her ankles in powder-fine flakes, like the snow of   
midwinter. The wind had died and she could hear the child's   
crying very clearly. It only spoke one word, "Mama," again and   
again. There was such grief and longing in its voice that she   
feared she would find the mother lying dead in the snow, perhaps   
murdered by the same person who killed Kristie Herron.   
  
"Keep talking, honey," Scully said, though the child gave no sign   
that it heard. The two of them had simply been reciting their   
respective litanies as she picked her way closer and closer.   
When she at last forced her way through a vine-filled thicket,   
she stood at the edge of a clearing. Moonlight dazzled her eyes.   
It was as if the storm had never been -- a full moon shone among   
sailing clouds and turned the snow into glittering diamonds.   
She stared a moment, disoriented. Three or four rustic buildings   
stood away to her right, and in the shadow of the largest one a   
figure huddled, small and pale against a big, dark stain in the   
snow.   
  
She ran closer and realized that there was not one child but two.   
One was a long-haired girl about three years old. The other was   
a young baby, wrapped in a bloodied cloth and held clutched to   
the older child's chest. It was clear the infant wouldn't live.   
Its throat had been slashed nearly through, but its eyes remained   
open and there was a continual wet wheezing sound as it tried to  
draw breath. A wound like that on a living body could only be   
seconds old. Scully fired once into the air, to draw the   
attention of rescuers and to run off who or whatever had just   
done *that.*   
  
"You're all right. I'm a doctor. The other officers will be   
here any moment," Scully said, loud enough that anyone hiding   
nearby should be able to hear. Could she carry both children and   
still be able to use her gun? She'd have to.   
  
The girl's gray eyes had the fixed stare of shock and her clothes   
were soaked in blood. Whether it was hers or the dying baby's   
Scully didn't know, and there was no time to examine her. Scully   
reached to scoop the children up but something checked her hand,   
too fast to have meaning for her. She felt a burning sensation   
followed by cold wetness on her fingers and looked down. Her   
hand was bleeding.   
  
Slowly it dawned on her that the child was holding a long, thin   
knife. "It's all right," she said, her mind too dazed to make   
anything of this except the girl believed she was defending   
herself. Scully grabbed for the little elbow in what should have   
been an easy disarm, but instead the knife laid open the skin of   
her palm. There was no time for this -- the baby was dying and   
the killer was still close. "I have to get you out of here,"   
Scully said, her desperation rising.  
  
"No," the child said softly. "Stay."   
  
The strange plea made her hesitate, and she was struck by the   
loneliness in the child's pale little face. It was familiar,   
like an image from a half-remembered nightmare, and it echoed in   
the broken places of her soul.   
  
*****  
  
After what seemed like an eternity of thrashing around in the   
briars, Mulder reached the South Road Burying Ground. The tiny   
cemetery consisted of seven headstones, listing like drunkards,   
and two rocks. The enormous willow he remembered was still there.   
Scully was not.   
  
He was beginning to feel the stirrings of panic when a shot rang   
out from deeper in the woods. Mulder wasn't enough of a firearms   
expert to identify the sound of a firing SIG, but when he heard   
the eerie whistle of the bullet he knew the weapon was no low-  
powered hunting rifle. "Scully!" he called out. He struggled   
through the underbrush in the direction he'd heard the gun fire,   
trying to stay within the cover of large trees. The last thing   
he needed was to get his head blown off.   
  
His flashlight beam illuminated little and made everything around   
it seem darker. At this point the only reason to keep it on was   
the hope it might draw Scully to him. Of course, it might draw   
other things as well. No longer carefully tracking, he was   
moving as fast as he could through the undergrowth.   
  
The weaving flashlight beam began illuminating orange flags stuck   
in the soil -- evidence markers. This was the spot Kristie had   
met her attacker. A moment later the light revealed a bloodied   
shoe. Over the shoe was a leg. Mulder stopped short and angled   
the beam up. There stood Scully, her face gray as a corpse's,   
watching blood run down her hands.  
  
Mulder had the feeling he was looking at a dead woman. He asked   
softly, "What happened to you?"  
  
She looked up, and he saw her pupils were dilated even in the   
bright beam of light. Her brows drew together as if she were   
trying to place him. "She was just here," she said.   
  
"Who was just here?" Mulder asked.  
  
"A little girl," she said. She began looking at the ground   
around her. "There was snow . . ." She turned away from him and   
began to wander off among the evidence markers. That alone was   
enough to convince him something was terribly wrong. Scully had   
never fouled a crime scene in her life.   
  
"What is it?" he asked. "What did you see?"  
  
"There was a house . . . there were little children. They were   
wounded, and I wanted to help, but I couldn't. She wanted me to   
stay with her . . ."  
  
"You're hurt. You need to get out of here," he said. He put his   
hand on her arm to draw her toward him. She resisted at first,   
then turned and curled against his chest. He took her hands in   
his own and balled them into fists, pressing the cuts on her   
palms closed. Her fingers were as cold as death despite the hot   
blood that ran between them.  
  
*****  
  
Hours later Mulder sat by Scully's bedside in the ER of the tiny   
hospital in Edgartown. Scully slept, and every so often an   
orderly would arrive to spread a freshly-warmed blanket over her.   
She'd been unwilling or unable to explain how she became injured out   
in the dark woods. All he knew was that she'd found wounded   
children somewhere southeast of the graveyard and was reluctant   
to leave the scene, blood loss and hypothermia be damned. She'd   
only consented to come away after Joe Luce and another officer   
arrived, and she'd kept her gaze toward the graveyard even as   
Mulder led her toward the road.  
  
He reached out and touched her fingertips, the only part of her   
left hand that wasn't bandaged, and was relieved to feel that her   
skin was warm now.   
  
"What did you see out there?" he asked softly. Deeply asleep,   
his partner did not reply.  
  
He heard the sound of approaching footsteps. This person was   
wearing hard-soled shoes, not the orthopedic footwear of the   
hospital staff. "Fox?" came a voice.  
  
"Joey," Mulder said. He stood up and opened the curtain that   
walled off Scully's bed. The first thing that impressed him   
about Joe Luce was how much he looked like the little kid he   
had known. The big dark eyes were still there, and so was the   
hair that refused to take any kind of decent part. The  
stuff still sat on Joe's head like twists of brown winter grass.   
Afterward Mulder's mind filled in the unfamiliar. Manhood had   
squared Joe's jaw and broadened his shoulders, and he wore a   
Chilmark Police Chief's uniform, just as his uncle had. It was   
fitting, somehow.   
  
Joe had clearly just come from outside. Half-melted sleet   
pellets rested on his shoulders and in his hair, and cold   
radiated from his clothes.   
  
"How's your partner?" Joe asked.  
  
"She'll be all right," Mulder said. "What did you find?"  
  
Joe shook his head. "We didn't find any kids, Fox. Some of the   
guys from Crime Scene Services came out with their dogs, and we   
still came up with nothing. That shot you heard -- you think it   
was from her gun?"  
  
"I can look," Mulder said. He walked over to the chair where   
Scully's things had been neatly folded. He drew her service   
weapon out of its holster and examined it. There were powder   
streaks around the barrel -- something Scully never would have   
tolerated for longer than it took her to get to her cleaning   
supplies. "It was hers," he said. Guessing Joe's next   
question, Mulder said, "Scully's not trigger-happy, and she   
doesn't imagine things."  
  
Joe held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. "I'm not   
suggesting that," he said. "I'm just trying to figure out what   
happened. You sure she said there were buildings?"  
  
"Yeah -- houses or little shacks," Mulder said.   
  
"That's what's bothering me, because there aren't any buildings   
out where you found her. I know, because I've been combing those   
woods for days," Joe said.  
  
"There's the Gelbemanns' place," Mulder said, without great   
conviction. The house was several hundred yards to the east of   
where he found Scully.  
  
"It's hard to see how she could have come from there," Joe said.   
"She'd have had to cross the creek, and there's no bridge. We   
did check on the Gelbemanns just to be safe, but they never heard   
or saw anything. There sure were no pools of blood around their   
house. Did Agent Scully say anything else to you? Did she give   
you a landmark . . . anything at all?" Joe asked.   
  
Mulder gazed over at his sleeping partner and motioned for Joe to   
follow him into the hall. He stopped at a spot that seemed far   
enough from the triage area to be discreet. "Scully told me the   
buildings showed up against the snow in the moonlight," Mulder   
said.   
  
Joe looked surprised and slightly embarrassed. Mulder could see   
this news shifted his attitude toward the whole situation. Sleet   
could pass for snow, but there had certainly been no moonlight   
out in the storm. "I don't know what she saw out there, Joey.   
But if you knew her, you'd know that she wouldn't just imagine   
something like this," Mulder said.  
  
"I believe you," Joe said.   
  
"If you did you'd still be out there," Mulder said.   
  
"Fox, the CSS guys are willing to switch off in teams until   
someone can do a flyover at dawn. I'm on call if they need me.   
There's not a lot more we can do," Joe insisted.  
  
"How do you think she cut her hands? On a twig?" Mulder asked.   
  
"It's being taken care of," Joe said. "Look, can I get you a   
cup of coffee or something?"  
  
"I've got some," Mulder said, gesturing toward the Styrofoam cup   
of now-cold coffee sitting on the table by Scully's bed.   
"Where's Irv?"  
  
"Irv?" Joe asked, looking surprised.   
  
"The little shit that got us into this in the first place.   
Scully said he seemed too interested in this case from the   
beginning," Mulder said.  
  
"I'm not sure if he's working tonight. This is his secondary   
job -- he and Emma still run that photography store during the   
day," Joe said.  
  
"You're kidding. They couldn't stand each other," Mulder said.  
  
"They still can't. Actually they're divorced, but they live   
together. It's his photo business but he's running it out of her   
house. I guess they figured putting up with each other was   
easier than dividing up the stuff," Joe said.  
  
"If he's here I want to see him," Mulder said. He went to the   
nurses' station and convinced the woman behind the desk to page   
Irv, and then Irv's supervisor. As Mulder stood waiting for a   
response to the pages, he listened to Joe answer a staticky call   
over his two-way radio. The reporting officer told him that the  
dogs had found no other trails besides Mulder and Scully's.  
  
"I thought you were off-duty," Mulder said, forestalling any   
comments Joe might make.  
  
"Never," Joe said, as he replaced the receiver on its shoulder   
strap. "I'm a full 25% of Chilmark's finest."  
  
"Just like your uncle," Mulder said.  
  
"I'm not my uncle," Joe said.  
  
The phone behind the nurses' desk trilled softly. The desk   
attendant took it and said, "I see. Thank you." When she hung   
up she said, "That was the transporter's room. Irv Stuckey isn't   
scheduled to work tonight."  
  
"Thanks," Mulder said, and turned to go back to Scully's bedside.   
Joe caught his elbow.  
  
"Hey, Fox, c'mon. If I don't get some coffee I'm going to keel   
over," Joe said.  
  
Mulder repressed the urge to shrug Joe's hand off. "Isn't Sue   
expecting you?" he asked.  
  
"No," Joe said. The bleakness in his voice made Mulder pause.   
For the first time he realized his former friend might have   
other reasons for not wanting to return home.  
  
"I'm sorry," Mulder said.  
  
Joe shrugged and looked away. "These things happen. Three out of   
the four people on the Chilmark force are divorced now. Our   
job's not exactly 'NYPD Blue,' but the hours . . . you know. The   
sad thing is that now that I have court-regulated visitation, I   
think I see my daughter more often."   
  
Joey's words did a lot to dissolve the resentment Mulder had been   
feeling toward him. Mulder had felt in a one-down position due to   
his own personal failures, and in his mind Joe's confession   
brought them to the same level. "Coffee'd be great," Mulder said.   
He allowed himself a last look at Scully, still sleeping and safe   
for the moment, before walking past the nurses' station and out   
into the hall.  
  
The hospital corridor was all gleaming white surfaces. "The   
place looks better. It used to be such a dump," Mulder said. He   
remembered cracked floor tiles and walls painted sickly pea-green   
to the height of a child's eye-level.   
  
"They've done a lot with it. They had to -- the Island   
population outgrew it. Every bed was filled all the time. No --   
wrong way," Joe stopped Mulder as he turned a corner. "The   
cafeteria's this way now." He pointed in the opposite  
direction.  
  
"Right," Mulder said, and followed him. It was odd to feel like   
a newcomer here.   
  
The cafeteria was deserted except for a listless-looking family   
in one corner and a couple of maintenance guys hunkered over   
their soda cans. Neither Mulder nor Joe spoke as they bought   
overpriced cups of oily-looking coffee and walked back out into   
the dining area. To Mulder's surprise, Joe headed straight for  
the glass doors that led outside. Mulder followed him out onto a   
concrete slab with a few snow-covered tables on it. This was the   
coldest part of the night, and the damp sleet had finally   
crystallized into tight little flakes that settled on their heads   
and shoulders. Mulder blew steam off his coffee and gazed into   
the woods that began at the bottom of the hill.   
  
For a while the only sound Mulder heard was the wind in the trees   
and his own breathing. There was a waiting quality to their   
silence, but it wasn't awkward. Among people who have known each   
other more than 30 years, silence is also a form of   
communication.   
  
At last Joe said, "I'm sorry about what I said back when we were   
in high school. About blaming you for what happened to your   
sister."  
  
Mulder shrugged as if the incident no longer bothered him. "I   
guess I shouldn't have slugged you in the head."  
  
"No, I deserved it," Joe said. He rubbed the eye socket that had   
taken the long-ago punch and said, "Nothing up there worth   
saving, anyway."   
  
"You were just repeating what you'd heard," Mulder said.  
  
"The town's not against you, Fox. It never was," Joe said.  
  
"It was against my parents, then," Mulder said.  
  
"No, it's just . . . it was so weird how it happened. My uncle   
said it gave him a funny feeling. He wondered how a stranger in   
a town of 600 people would go unnoticed. Your house wasn't even   
visible from the road. How'd some guy know there would be two   
kids home alone?" Joe asked.  
  
"They'd been watching us a long time," Mulder said. Though Joe   
stood just out of his field of vision, Mulder sensed his startled   
movement.  
  
"You know what happened?" Joe asked.  
  
"Yes," Mulder said. The word came out very quietly, and at first   
Mulder wasn't sure Joe had heard.   
  
"It was bad?" Joe asked. Mulder heard the slight break in his   
voice. Samantha had been his friend, too.   
  
Mulder let his eyes fall shut against the memory of that dingy   
house on an abandoned military base. Better to think about   
afterward, when he saw the lost children shining in the   
starlight. "She's better off now. She's safe. They can't hurt   
her anymore," he said.  
  
"Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ," Joe asked. His job might not be NYPD   
Blue, but he was a cop. He'd know there were child abductors and   
then there were child abductors.   
  
"It's all over now. It was over a long time ago," Mulder said.   
He spoke as if to soothe, but whether he was comforting himself   
or Joey he didn't know.   
  
"I'm sorry, Fox. I'm so sorry," Joe said.  
  
"You knew, didn't you? You always knew she wasn't coming home,"   
Mulder asked.  
  
"No. I mean, when the weeks and months go by and there's   
nothing, not even a ransom note, you get a real bad feeling. But   
no, I didn't know," Joe said.   
  
"After a while you wouldn't look me in the eye when I talked   
about her. And you knew my family was involved. I think you   
must be a hell of a cop, Joe," Mulder said.  
  
"What do you mean, your family?" Joe asked. Mulder looked over   
at him and felt gratified that Joe appeared truly shocked.  
  
"It had to do with my father, with his work. He knew they were   
going to take her, and my mother at least suspected. I think my   
dad tried to fight them at first, but something changed his mind.   
Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing. I don't know,"   
Mulder said.  
  
"That's why your dad was murdered? Because of his work?" Joe   
asked.  
  
"Yeah. He wanted to tell me something, get it off his   
conscience, but they wouldn't let him. My mother wanted to tell   
me something too, and I lost her in February," Mulder said.   
  
Joe set down his coffee on a snowy tabletop and put his hand to   
his head. "What are you telling me, Fox? This is terrorists?   
Ex-KGB? What?"   
  
"You don't really want to know," Mulder said. He hadn't meant to   
give so much away.   
  
"Aliens," Joe said. "You used to talk about aliens."  
  
"I still do," Mulder said. "And I'm one of the few who wasn't   
silenced real quick."  
  
After a few moments Joe asked, "Fox . . . do you think what's out   
there, what your partner met in the woods, is related to what   
happened to your family?"   
  
Mulder released a long breath that steamed in the cold. "No.   
No, I don't think so. I'm starting to think it may be   
paranormal, though."  
  
Joe gave his a strange look as he asked, "You mean there's a   
real headless lady wandering around by the cliffs?"   
  
Mulder remembered wide-eyed, credulous Joey, the kid with a Cub   
Scout scarf around his neck and no front teeth. He repressed a   
childish urge to mess with him. "Scully didn't see any headless   
ladies," he said.   
  
"So this is what you do, right? You investigate this kind of   
thing. How do you stop something paranormal from killing   
people?" Joe asked.   
  
"That depends on what it is," Mulder said. "It helps a lot if it   
has wrists you can handcuff. Our record with spectral phenomena   
hasn't been that good."  
  
"Terrific," Joey said, turning away again. "I'm actually praying   
there's a homicidal maniac loose in the woods."  
  
"Would you really believe me if I said there was something out   
there? Something not human?" Mulder asked.  
  
"You? I might. Yeah, I just might," Joe said.  
  
"How come?" Mulder asked.  
  
Joe seemed to consider this. "You always were a fucking freak,"   
he said.  
  
"Thank you," said Mulder, with no trace of sarcasm. After a   
moment's hesitation he rested his hand on Joe's shoulder.   
  
Joe clapped his hand over Mulder's and said, "Go on back to your   
partner."   
  
"Sure," Mulder said. He turned and opened the glass door,   
leaving Joey to his thoughts and the night.   
  
***** 


	6. resurgam6

Mulder found Scully awake when he returned. She looked pale but   
seemed aware of her surroundings. "Hi," he said. "How you   
doing?"  
  
"Better," she said. The unflattering fluorescent light made the   
dark circles under her eyes stand out. She looked like she could   
sleep for a week.   
  
He sat down next to her and brushed his hand over her forehead.   
"You're not looking so good," he said. "But then you should see   
that truck."  
  
That only got the slightest flicker of amusement from her. "They   
haven't found the little girl, have they?" she asked.  
  
"No," Mulder said. "Joey says they're working through the night.   
They'll find her." Scully shut her eyes but made no reply.   
"What happened?" Mulder asked. "What did you see?"  
  
"I told you," she said. "I heard a child screaming out in the   
woods -- terrified, crying and crying. I followed the sound all   
the way out to the crime scene area until I came to a house.   
There was blood all around it . . . and sitting in the snow was a   
girl, a very little girl holding a young baby in her arms, just   
weeks old. Someone had almost cut its head off. I fired in the   
air to scare off the attacker and tried to pick them up, but she   
had a knife and it cut my hand."  
  
"Who had a knife? The kid?" Mulder asked. Scully nodded.   
"There's a little kid out there with a knife?" Mulder asked   
again. The case was getting more bizarre by the minute.   
  
"She was trying to protect the baby . . . maybe not from me. I   
don't think she was afraid of me; she wanted me to stay with her.   
I knew I had to get them out of there but she wouldn't let me   
pick her up. I sat down with them . . . no, did I? I don't   
remember. It seems like I was there a long time, and then   
suddenly you were beside me and I didn't know where I was."  
Scully put her hand to her head as if trying set the chain of  
events in a logical order.  
  
Mulder hesitated, torn between pushing her for more information   
and letting her be. He decided that he had to push if there   
really were dying children out there. "Scully, Joe says that   
there aren't any buildings in the area where I found you. He   
wants to know if you saw a landmark, anything else that you   
can--"  
  
"I know what I saw," she snapped.   
  
"Okay, okay. There was blood in the snow?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Yes," she said.  
  
"Lots of blood, arterial blood everywhere," Mulder said.  
  
"Yes," she said again. He bent and picked up one of her shoes   
from underneath the chair and held it toward her sole up. There   
was mud caked between the white rubber treads but there was no   
blood visible. Mulder turned the shoe right side up and showed   
her the rust-colored spots on the uppers. This was not blood   
that had been churned up from the ground. The round splotches   
were the kind made by blood that had fallen. It was almost   
certainly from her own hands.  
  
"Oh, God," Scully said. "God." She pressed her bandaged hands   
to her face.   
  
"It was dark. You were confused," Mulder said.   
  
"The doctor wants to do a CT scan of my head. I know why -- I   
told him I'd had cancer and he wants to see if there's a tumor in   
my brain making me hallucinate," Scully said.  
  
Mulder hadn't considered that possibility. The thought that she   
might be sick again was like an icy hand at his throat. "It   
sounds like a good thing to check out," he said.   
  
"Mulder, if I have cancer that's metastasized to my brain then it   
doesn't matter if I have a CT done here or back in D.C. or   
nowhere at all," Scully said. "I don't want to stay. I want to   
go back to the hotel."  
  
"So you're signing yourself out against medical advice?" Mulder   
asked. He knew it was unfair to be upset about it. He'd done   
the same thing many times.   
  
"He didn't say I had to stay. My ribs are just bruised, and my   
hands aren't cut that badly. Everything still works." She   
slowly touched every finger of her left hand to her thumb. From   
her expression he could see that it hurt her.  
  
"I wish you'd have the CT done," Mulder said.  
  
"Before all this happened I felt fine. I had a check-up in   
February," she said. She must have seen the worry on his face   
because she said, "I'll have it done in D.C. I want to spend   
what's left of the night in a real bed."  
  
"Okay," Mulder said, resigning himself to her decision. He took   
her hand and lifted her swollen fingertips to his lips. "I'll   
see if I can get your discharge papers." He stood and walked   
over to the nurses' station.  
  
It was unmanned just then, and as he waited he had time to think   
about his painfully divided feelings. His first impulse was to   
believe everything Scully told him. He could usually trust her   
perceptions more than he could trust his own, and yet in this   
case there was evidence that did not bear her story out. If   
she was mistaken, if her mind truly had been affected by   
something unknown, then it was not these mystery children who   
were in danger. Instead, Scully herself was the person most at   
risk.   
  
In his mind's eye he saw Kristie's body on the autopsy table, and   
his fingers tightened around the edge of the nurses' station   
counter. He directed a rare plea to Scully's God, //She believes   
in you. She still trusts you after everything she's been   
through, and that ought to count for something. I'd have told   
you to go to hell by now. Prove that you're worthy of her   
trust. Take care of her.//   
  
As always, Mulder had no sense that anyone was listening.   
  
*****  
  
It was close to dawn when they left the hospital. Scully's   
bloodied clothes were dry, but Mulder wrapped his own coat around   
her shoulders as an extra layer between her and the cold. She   
curled up in the car's passenger seat with her face toward the   
window.  
  
Neither partner spoke as they drove slowly back toward Nye House.   
The snow had stopped falling, but it blew over the road in weird   
little spinning flurries that obscured Mulder's vision. These   
miniature blizzards were unpredictable and maddening.  
  
His overtired mind began to imagine the elements had a will of   
their own. The fitful wind seemed restless. Visibility   
worsened in every intersection, and he started to suspect the   
night of an uneasy mischievousness just short of malice.   
The saner portion of his mind told him to pull over and rest   
before he put the car in a ditch, but some instinct warned   
him against stopping. He looked over at Scully; she seemed   
relaxed. Why was he anxious about parking along a quiet road   
on the outskirts of Edgartown?   
  
A shadow appeared in the headlights. He pulled his foot off the   
pedal and hit the brakes, half expecting to hear a "thud" as he   
hit a dog or a baby deer. But the shade dissolved the instant   
he looked straight at it. Mulder blinked and tried to clear his   
head. The dizzying swirl of snowflakes made it hard to think,   
much less focus on the road. He could not shake the feeling that   
there was something outside the car.   
  
Scully sat up beside him, holding herself very still, as if   
listening. "What is it?" he asked. "What do you hear?"  
  
"Nothing," she said softly. In the dull-green dashboard light   
her expression was unreadable, but he sensed tension in every   
line of her body.  
  
The watching silence seemed to grow louder. "Yeah. I hear it   
too," Mulder said.   
  
Powdery snow swirled over the windshield. Stray sleet pellets   
struck the glass like tiny, frustrated fists, as if to say: //In,   
in, in. Let us in, in, in.//   
  
Slowly, like a child fascinated by fire but afraid of being   
burned, Scully lifted her bandaged fingers toward the windshield.   
The wind scoured the glass with ice dust as though it would wear   
away the barrier between itself and her.  
  
"Don't," Mulder said. He caught Scully's hand and pressed it   
down onto her lap. The view went nearly white and gusts of wind   
made the car bob like a boat on a choppy sea.  
  
"Mulder--" Scully said, gripping the dashboard with her free   
hand.  
  
Mulder tapped the brakes, and the car's back end fishtailed   
toward the middle of the road. He turned the wheel in the   
direction of the skid to try to stop the uncontrolled sliding.   
Tires squealed as he struggled to compensate for their   
still-powerful momentum, and the Ford barely skirted the edge   
of the narrow shoulder. The back rotors made a whining noise  
as one tire spun in space over the gully. Mulder downshifted   
quickly and the car lurched forward, sending up a shower of   
gravel. After a bad moment when they seemed headed for the   
opposite ditch, he was able to guide the vehicle back into   
the right-hand lane.   
  
"Mulder, it's too icy. Pull over," Scully urged.   
  
"No, that's what it wants -- to keep you out in the storm so it   
can have another shot at you," Mulder said. Whatever the   
howling, blowing thing was, it seemed to have a special interest   
in Scully. He wasn't about to stop and hand her over without a   
fight. Instead he accelerated.   
  
"What are you *doing?*" Scully asked.  
  
"Hang on," Mulder said. In a low voice he added, "We'll see who   
blinks first."   
  
"Are you trying to kill us?" Scully cried.  
  
He pressed the gas pedal, and the speedometer needle climbed past   
30, 35, 40 miles per hour. Visibility was near zero; he was   
driving on sheer faith and desperation. He spoke to the thing   
outside the window, "Go back. Go back where you came from.   
She's not yours; leave her alone."  
  
Scully screamed his name. Brilliant lights flashed to Mulder's   
right and he heard the blare of a truck horn. He glanced over   
and saw a big rig barreling toward them, just meters away. Mulder   
hauled the wheel hard left and turned onto the intersecting road,   
barely ahead of the truck. For a moment the 18-wheeler's   
headlights filled his entire rearview mirror.   
  
The car's momentum sent them hurtling off the road into a field,   
where frozen weeds lashed the Ford's sides as it jolted over   
uneven ground. Mulder's teeth rattled as he brought the bucking   
car to a stop, facing north after having spun a full 270 degrees.   
  
His first thought as he shifted into park was that he hadn't done   
a bad job of rural combat driving. Then he saw Scully huddled in   
the seat next to him, her bandaged hands over her eyes. "Hey,"   
he said, reaching out to touch her hair. She tried to shrug his   
hand off. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I scared you." He   
got no response.   
  
"I was scared too," he admitted. Could he explain to her why?   
What if she hadn't felt the hostile presence after all? He   
glanced down the road in the direction the truck had gone. The   
night-being seemed to have vanished with it, but Mulder didn't   
feel that his victory over it was conclusive. "I thought I was   
doing the right thing," he said.  
  
After a few seconds she scooted close and put her arms around   
him. "You're okay," he told her. "You're going to be all   
right."   
  
"What's happening to me?" she asked, her voice muffled against   
his chest.   
  
"You're going to be just fine," he insisted.   
  
"I want to stop up ahead," she said.  
  
"Where?" Mulder asked, puzzled.   
  
She turned from him and pointed toward a building on the far   
corner, just visible in the blue-gray light of pre-dawn. The   
marquis sign in front was a bright blur in a haze of drifting   
ground-snow, but its light was enough to illuminate a tall, white   
figure standing beyond it. The pale form seemed to be draped in   
a heavy fabric which initially reminded Mulder of grave clothes.   
Then he recognized the silhouette's veil and gently inclined   
head. It was a statue, probably a Madonna and child.   
  
"Sure," Mulder said. He slowly made the bone-rattling drive back   
up to the road. In his experience, spectral entities did not   
actually avoid churches, but it was probably a good idea for him   
to get out from behind the wheel until daylight. The church   
seemed a better place to rest than an unsheltered spot along the   
roadside.   
  
When he pulled into the parking lot he asked, "Think we'll be   
able to find a spot?" Scully gave him a thin smile. The place   
was deserted. The sign by the road identified the church as Our   
Lady of Refuge, and listed its earliest Mass time as 8:30 a.m.,   
just over 90 minutes away. "You don't want to stay for the   
service, do you?" Mulder asked.   
  
"No," Scully said. "I just want a minute."   
  
He parked the car and then followed her up to the church doors.   
Ordinarily he would have asked if she wanted to be alone, but   
under the circumstances he didn't want her out of his sight. She   
looked very pale and fragile under the gray bulk of his coat.   
  
The first two doors she tried were locked. "It's still kinda   
early," Mulder said, when to his surprise the third door swung   
open at her pull. "I guess they like early around here," he said   
as he followed her inside. The vestibule was dark and silent, its   
air filled with the chill of the snowy morning. Mulder caught   
the faint wood-varnish smell he associated with churches, along   
with a smoky-pungent odor he supposed was incense.   
  
He'd been in law enforcement too long to feel comfortable in an   
unlocked and apparently empty building. He eased the corner of   
his sweater up to make access to his weapon easier, and slipped  
the safety off. Hoping he wouldn't need the gun after all, he   
followed Scully into the darkened sanctuary by sound as much   
as by sight.   
  
Once his eyes adjusted, the sanctuary's layout surprised him; it   
was a small, boxlike affair with two straight rows of pews   
leading up to the altar. The general effect was of a 30's-era   
Assembly of God church with statues of Mary and Joseph hanging   
roughly where the gospel choir ought to stand. The blue sections   
of the tall, narrow stained-glass windows had begun to glow   
faintly, but the room's only significant light came from the   
ruby-colored Presence candle that rested on a shelf in the far   
corner.   
  
Mulder remained in the doorway as Scully walked down the aisle,   
lowered herself carefully onto to one knee, then rose and slid   
into a pew. After a few moments he heard a soft "thunk" as she   
lowered the kneeler. Her garments rustled as she knelt down.   
  
He stood and watched her with a mixture of tenderness and   
something akin to awe. He had always been a little envious of   
her spiritual life. Even though he teased her about   
Christianity's more blatant contradictions, he would have liked   
to believe in her God, to have a connection to the source of   
inexhaustible comfort and strength she described.   
  
It was no mystery why people who detested religion were atheists.   
But Mulder desired to believe and could not, which was proof   
enough for him that such a God did not exist. In his more   
paranoid moments he believed in another kind of transcendent   
being, one who heard prayers but did not answer, who watched the   
tortured writhings of humanity but did not act, or worse, who   
watched and smiled. Maybe Scully would pray for him. If her   
benevolent God existed after all, perhaps he would have mercy on   
Mulder for her sake.   
  
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the outer door   
opening. Mulder felt the inward rush of colder air and stepped   
further into the sanctuary. He rested his hand against his   
stomach, not far from the holster clipped to his waistband.   
//What if it's something I can't shoot?// he thought. The small,   
shadowy figure that was Scully hadn't moved at all. He wondered   
if she'd fallen asleep leaning against the pew in front of her.   
  
A voice called from the vestibule, "Hello?" It was a man's,   
human and nervous-sounding. Mulder relaxed a little.   
  
"Hello," he called back. He returned to the doorway and found a   
bearded little man with thick glasses standing near the outer   
doors. He was wearing sweat pants and an Edmonton Oilers   
sweatshirt, and in his hands he carried a flashlight and a mop   
which he brandished like a weapon.   
  
"The church is closed. You shouldn't be here," the man said.  
  
"I'm sorry -- the door was open," Mulder said. "My partner was   
injured last night and she just wanted a few minutes. We didn't   
mean any harm." As an afterthought he pulled his ID wallet from   
his pocket and offered it to the man.  
  
The man came forward hesitantly and shone his light on the FBI   
badge. He looked back and forth between Mulder's face and his ID   
picture several times. He did not appear to recognize Mulder's   
name, which in a way was a relief. Mulder was fairly certain   
this church had been built after he became an adult and left the   
Island for good.   
  
"You're here because of that poor girl that died?" the man asked.  
  
"Yes," Mulder said.   
  
"Well, bless you for that," the man said, seeming to relax. "Is  
your partner all right?"  
  
"She will be," Mulder said. The man looked past him into the   
sanctuary, and Mulder understood his wordless question. "She's   
right in there," Mulder said.  
  
The man leaned his mop against the wall and walked down the aisle   
toward Scully. He put his hand on her shoulder and bent to speak   
to her softly, angling the flashlight so it didn't shine in her   
face. Mulder heard Scully's whispered reply, "Yes, Father."  
  
It hadn't occurred to Mulder that the little guy in the Oilers   
sweatshirt was the priest. He immediately dubbed him Father   
Gretzky. Whatever the man asked Scully next, she shook her head   
no.   
  
"Are you unable to take it? I can give you a Host to take with   
you," Father Gretzky said.   
  
"No, Father. Thank you," Scully said.  
  
The priest seemed about to argue the point, but then relented.   
"If you change your mind, we have Mass at 8:30, 10, and 11:30   
this morning. You can call for the Sacrament of Reconciliation   
at any time," he said.   
  
"Thank you, Father," Scully said.  
  
The priest remained a moment, then lightly brushed her hair with   
his fingertips and turned to walk back up the aisle toward   
Mulder. "I can give you a few more minutes, then I'll have to   
ask you to leave," he said.  
  
"We won't be long," Mulder said.  
  
Father Gretzky glanced back toward Scully, his expression one of   
concern. "You're sure she's all right?" he asked softly.   
  
"She's tougher than she looks," Mulder said. The priest nodded   
once, but didn't appear convinced.   
  
Dawn had come, pale and cold, by the time Mulder and Scully left   
the church. "Did you just turn down Communion?" Mulder asked as   
he unlocked the car door. She shot him a don't-you-start-too   
look. Although no Catholic theologian, Mulder was aware that   
turning down the services of a priest on a high holy day was a   
very big deal, and not like Scully at all. Suddenly he regretted   
all the times he'd twitted her about her faith. The last thing   
he wanted to do was damage her relationship with God. "That   
wasn't because of me, was it?" he asked.  
  
"I told you once, Mulder. Not everything is about you," Scully   
said.   
  
Mulder drew breath to argue with her, but then released it.   
She'd made it plain enough that she wanted him to butt out. He   
popped the lock for her and she slid into the passenger seat.   
Both of them remained silent during the ride back to Nye House.   
  
*****  
  
Late in the morning, Mulder awoke to the sensation of Scully   
shaking him. "Mulder, wake up. There's somebody at the door,"   
she said, her voice husky with sleep. He opened his eyes and   
looked up at her. She sat up in bed next to him, wearing one of   
his button-down shirts. The blue-and-white striped fabric had   
become as rumpled as the sheets lying bunched over her lap.   
Sunlight streamed from behind the closed curtains and backlit her   
tousled hair, giving her an irregular aura. Mulder just   
stretched out and enjoyed the sight of her. The sunlit morning   
almost let him forget the unexplained terrors of the night   
before, and there was nothing he wanted more than to spend the   
rest of the day in bed with her.  
  
The phone trilled sharply. With reluctance, Mulder rolled over   
and picked up the receiver. "Mulder."  
  
"Agent Mulder, this is Detective Davis from Yarmouth. Can you   
come to the door?" the voice on the phone said.  
  
"Yeah, hang on," Mulder said. He got up and pulled on his jeans   
and a sweater. With luck, Davis had caught Kristie's killer or   
rescued the two kids Scully saw in the storm last night. Mulder   
didn't let his hopes get too high; he knew his luck tended to   
fall into the bad-to-none category.   
  
He opened the door to find the mustached detective tucking his   
cell phone into an inner pocket of his trench coat. Davis' gray   
3-piece suit was immaculate except for the reddish Vineyard mud   
that clung to his cuffs and shoes. Clearly he'd been up and busy   
for quite a while. Mulder scratched his day-old growth of beard   
and felt like a slacker.   
  
"Sorry to have to disturb you, Agent. How's your partner?" Davis   
asked. Something in the detective's overly casual manner made it   
obvious he knew that Mulder need only turn around to ask.  
  
Mulder could just feel Scully cringe, even though Davis hadn't   
said anything inappropriate. In a way that made it worse --   
someone with nothing to hide would have missed the embarrassing   
connotations of the question. "She'll be fine. How can I help   
you, Detective?"   
  
"A couple of troopers picked up John McBer outside Oak Bluffs   
last night, although he claimed to be Jim MacDonald at the time.   
They're holding him for driving under the influence," Davis said.  
  
Mulder recognized the name of the drug dealer Kristie had been   
scheduled to testify against. "Have you talked to him yet?"   
  
"No. That's what I came to ask you to do," Davis said. He must   
have read Mulder's doubtful look because said, "Chief Luce   
recommended you. He said you'd been part of the FBI's Behavioral   
Science Unit and that you have a knack for interrogations."  
  
"Joey said that?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Actually he said that he'd known you since you were five years   
old, and that you were the greatest mind-fuck there ever was,"   
Davis said.  
  
Okay, that he could imagine Joe saying. "I take it McBer isn't   
desperate to confess to anything," Mulder said.   
  
Davis' brief smile didn't reach his eyes. "You could say that.   
He's out on bond, charged with the murder of a narcotics agent in   
1997. The case against him isn't great, but the prosecutor took   
it when Miss Herron turned State's evidence. Now that she's dead,   
McBer knows he's got a good chance of getting off if he just   
keeps his mouth shut. It all seems a little convenient."  
  
Mulder ran his fingers back through his hair, trying to think.   
It had been a long time since he'd consulted on an interrogation.   
It had been a long time since anyone cared about his professional   
opinion on anything. "Has he asked for his lawyer yet?"  
  
"Not last I checked. All he knows is he was brought in for drunk   
driving and that the judge is almost certainly going to revoke   
his bond -- which was 3 million dollars, by the way," Davis said.   
  
"He posted that?" Mulder asked. He tried to imagine the judge's   
reaction to the news that McBer had actually bonded out. He was   
pretty sure he could guess the prosecutor's reaction. The guy   
was probably ready to tear a phone book in half.   
  
"McBer's father used to own Youngstown Steel, but the family's   
not so rich they ought to have a spare 3 million lying around.   
I think he has some friends who are willing to pay up front to   
make sure he never has to say too much in court," Davis said.  
  
Terrific. Now McBer was a mob-connected drug dealer. "You're   
right. Those are about the longest odds on a confession I ever   
heard," Mulder said.  
  
"If you're not comfortable just say so. We can go ahead without   
you," Davis said. Again, the words were neutral, but the way the   
detective looked steadily at Mulder made the statement into a   
challenge.   
  
Mulder wondered, did this man want his help that badly? Or was   
it simply that the investigators had very little to lose? If   
they gambled on the FBI's Least Wanted and everything hit the   
fan, they might just be able to shift some of the blame onto   
Mulder.   
  
He released his breath slowly and came to a decision. "Okay.   
I'll need as much information on him as you can find. If he's   
ever had a psyche evaluation done as part of a court proceeding   
or a prison intake, I'd really be interested in that."   
  
Davis nodded as if satisfied. "I'll see what I can do. How soon   
can you be ready?"   
  
"Give me 10 minutes to get rid of my Don Johnson look," Mulder   
said, running his hand over his beard stubble.  
  
"Sure. I'll call the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department and see   
what they can fax over," Davis said. He retrieved his phone and   
walked toward the stairs dialing.   
  
***** 


	7. resurgam7

After Davis' question about her, Scully quietly retreated to the   
room's tiny bathroom. She stood at the old-fashioned sink,   
unwinding the gauze around her hands while the two men talked in   
the doorway. She felt very fragile, like a pane of glass. If   
someone pushed her she felt she might fall to the floor and   
shatter.   
  
Scully looked at her reflection in the mirror with grim dismay.   
Her skin was very pale and dark circles stood out underneath her   
Eyes. The ashy contrast made her eyes seem too bright, as if she   
had a high fever. She remembered what Dr. Neumann in the ER had   
said about getting a CT scan done. Gingerly, she pressed her   
fingertips against the flesh around her eyes and nose, the area   
that had once concealed the tumorous mass. Her examination   
caused her no pain or bleeding. If the cancer had returned it   
might have gone somewhere else, perhaps deeper into her brain.   
  
The priest at Our Lady of Refuge had offered her the Sacraments   
of Communion and Anointing of the Sick early that morning, and   
her refusal of both seemed very strange even to herself. If she   
was going to refuse the Sacraments, why had she gone to the   
church in the first place?   
  
She'd been seeking comfort, safety . . . no, it was more than   
that. She'd been seeking a connection to something beyond the   
suffocating limits of everyday experience -- something like the   
power she had touched out in the woods. Yet the Sacraments were   
so bound up with life's prosaic milestones that she feared they   
would pull her back into the circle of ordinariness, away from   
the numinous edge she was contemplating.   
  
When she shut her eyes she could still see the woods by the   
graveyard -- moonlight sparkling on new-fallen snow, the pale   
little figures huddled in a spreading dark stain. "Stay," the   
girl with the knife had said. Scully still felt the pull of her   
call. The vision's icy desolation spoke to her in a language   
she'd never heard outside her own dreams. The child's loneliness   
was Scully's own. It reminded her of the words of the psalm:   
like "deep calling to deep."   
  
When Scully lost her daughter and any future chance of   
motherhood, it was like having half of herself cut away. The   
tiny children in the woods had lost their mother. They needed   
her. The three of them fit together, like fingers into a glove.   
Despite all reason, Scully ached to feel those small, chilled   
bodies nestled against her own, filling the terrible space Emily   
left.  
  
She heard Mulder come back into the room, reciting a line from   
"Mission: Impossible" to himself: "Your mission, Mr. Phelps,   
should you choose to accept it . . ."  
  
"What was that about?" Scully asked. Somewhat to her surprise,   
she sounded almost like her usual self.   
  
"Detective Davis just asked me to help interrogate John McBer,"   
Mulder said. "Getting a confession out of him is going to be   
like selling Perrier to a drowning man." He walked into the   
bathroom and Scully moved over to give him space at the sink.   
"How are your hands?" he asked.  
  
"They're fine," she said.  
  
He glanced down at her bruised and stitched skin and said, "In   
that case 'fine' doesn't look too good." He unzipped the small   
traveling case resting on the back of the sink and pulled out his   
electric razor.   
  
There was something bizarre about the two of them sharing a sink   
while calmly discussing murder and mayhem. Just another morning   
in the Twilight Zone for Mulder and Mrs. Spooky. "I'll be all   
right," she insisted.   
  
"If you're not, will you call me? It doesn't matter if I'm still   
in with McBer. Davis says they can get along without me anyway,"   
Mulder said.  
  
"I'll call you," Scully said.  
  
He stopped unwinding the razor's cord and looked down at her.   
"Promise?" he asked.  
  
She managed the three-fingered Girl Scouts' salute with her   
unbandaged right hand. "Scout's honor," she said.  
  
Mulder reached out and gently folded her first and fourth fingers   
down so she was flipping him off. "That's what you're really   
trying to tell me, isn't it?"   
  
Scully smiled despite herself, and for the first time she felt   
truly present in the room with him. "I'm not the one who said   
it," she said. "I think you should talk less and shave more.   
You've got a lot of Perrier to unload."   
  
He seemed to relax at the change in her manner. "So I'll throw   
in one of those little drink umbrellas," he said. She slipped by   
him as he hunted for an electrical outlet hidden in the dizzying   
Victorian pattern of the wallpaper.   
  
Scully sat down in the little round-backed chair by the window   
and waited until Mulder's razor started buzzing. Once he was   
occupied, she used her cell phone to call Martha's Vineyard   
Hospital and ask if any injured children had been admitted late   
in the night. None had. She wasn't all that surprised; she'd   
already begun to suspect that the bloody little girl with the   
gray eyes had been beyond human help for a long, long time.   
  
Scully hit the "end" button and sat with her hands in her lap,   
folded around the black rectangle of the phone. The knuckles of   
her right hand were swollen and discolored, with a line of black   
stitches like barbed wire marching across them. She lifted her   
left hand and looked at the cuts across the palm. They were   
nearly identical to the defense wounds found on Kristie Herron's   
body.   
  
She felt she understood that troubled young woman, who in all   
likelihood had given birth to a stillborn child. Scully wondered   
if Kristie had also felt called toward the darkness beyond the   
graveyard. Had she known the risks and gone anyway, hoping what   
dwelled out there would fill the hollow space inside her?   
  
Mulder's razor switched off, and Scully quickly replaced her   
phone on a trunk at the end of the bed, among her bloodied   
clothes. There was no real reason to keep her activities secret.   
Why should it bother Mulder if she called the hospital?   
  
The truth was she wanted to avoid his questions. She feared he   
would sense her thoughts and be horrified. Then he'd hover   
around her like a mother hen and keep her from -- Scully shied   
away from thinking, //returning to the bloodied spot among the   
crime scene markers.// She told herself Mulder's well-meaning   
attention would simply get in her way. She had a personal stake   
in this investigation now, too. There were people she wanted to   
interview, and Irv Stuckey was high on the list.   
  
She made herself very busy putting on the less-soiled articles of   
her clothing as Mulder came out of the bathroom. "Are there any   
drug stores open on Sunday around here? I want to get the script   
for antibiotics filled as soon as possible. Having my hands get   
infected is the last thing I need," she said.   
  
He looked a little taken aback by her sudden hurry to leave.   
"Probably not around Chilmark. You could try down-island,   
Edgartown or Oak Bluffs," Mulder said.   
  
"All right, I'll do that. Are you riding with Detective Davis, or   
do you need the car?" she asked.   
  
"I guess I don't need it," Mulder said. He picked up his keys   
from the little oval nightstand and offered them to her.   
  
"Thanks," she said. She stood on her toes and kissed him gently.   
He said nothing, but she felt his eyes on her as she gathered her   
things together and headed out the door.   
  
"See you," he called.  
  
*****  
  
Mulder felt uneasy as he watched his partner go. Something was   
bothering her and she didn't want to talk about it, that much was   
plain. He repressed his urge to follow and badger her into   
talking to him. //If she wants privacy that's her prerogative.   
She doesn't have to tell you everything,// he thought. The last   
thing either of them needed was for him to turn possessive out of   
fear of losing her.   
  
He gathered the few things he would need for the coming police   
interview with McBer: the Narcotics Anonymous book Scully had   
found in Kristie's bedroom; his reading glasses; his cell phone.   
As he locked up the room and walked down the hall to meet   
Detective Davis, he tried to keep his mind focused on the task   
ahead. Scully was better at staying out of trouble than he was.   
She said she was fine, and he'd have to take her at her word.   
  
Davis was standing at the foot of the stairs. "I talked to   
Suffolk County. Most of the information you want is in Concord,"   
he said, naming the state prison just outside Boston. "McBer was   
there between '93 and '95 for cocaine possession. They had him   
on intent to deliver too, but the court reversed the conviction   
on appeal. The arrest wasn't as clean as it should've been."   
Mulder walked beside the detective as they crossed the front   
room. "This time it has to be done right," Davis continued.   
"They call that lawyer of McBer's 'Jaws,' and it's not just   
because he's a legal shark. The guy mouths off to the media a   
lot and gets them circling around an investigation. He's gotten   
a couple of acquittals by essentially putting the arresting law   
enforcement agency on trial. I think it's only fair to warn   
you."  
  
Oh, great. Skinner was going to love this. Mulder stopped at   
the front door and said, "Being the scapegoat's nothing new for   
me, but I think it's fair that *you* know I'm not officially   
working this case. I'm just here with my partner."  
  
"Actually, you are working," Davis said. "Your A.D.'s been   
enthusiastic about having you guys involved with this   
investigation. He left us an off-hours contact number Friday   
afternoon, and I got your official participation approved five   
minutes ago."   
  
"Skinner did what?" Mulder asked. Skinner hated bad PR, and he   
was willing to officially assign Mulder to a job like this?   
There was no question that Scully's misgivings were confirmed --   
something big was about to go down in D.C.   
  
Davis' look of satisfaction was unmistakable. Mulder figured he   
was happy to have the FBI between him and the first volley of   
crap that the media was likely to throw. "A.D. Skinner said he   
has the utmost confidence in you. Back in Boston you yourself   
said we were going to want your help. You getting cold feet?"   
the detective asked.  
  
Open mouth, insert foot. "No," Mulder said. "Let's get going."   
He followed Davis out to the car, wishing he'd gotten more than   
five hours of sleep the night before. //You used to love doing   
this kind of thing under pressure,// he told himself. He'd   
seldom experienced anything like the adrenaline high he got in   
the BSU, doing work other people could "appreciate," as Skinner   
put it. //Then again, there was the insomnia, the chain smoking,   
the broken relationships . . .//  
  
Once Davis pulled out of the gravel driveway and turned east   
toward Edgartown, Mulder pulled his cell phone from his jacket   
pocket and set Kristie's NA book on his lap. The book was still   
wrapped in a battered dustjacket taken from a French/English   
dictionary.   
  
Davis glanced down at it. "What is that?" he asked.  
  
"My partner and I found it at the Herrons' house last night,"   
Mulder said. He opened the cover and revealed the handwritten   
names and phone numbers that dotted the blank first page. "Have   
you spoken to Brenda, Kim, Amber, Jane, Lisa, Kevin--"  
  
Davis glared at him and said, "No. You might have let us know   
you'd found that."   
  
"It was a busy night," Mulder said. "I'm putting my first bet on   
Brenda," he said, pointing to the circled name with the star next   
to it. There were three numbers below, labeled "H," "W," and   
"cell." He dialed the "H" number with his thumb.   
  
He listened while the phone rang and rang. "Come on, Brenda," he   
said. Finally there was a click and the answering machine picked   
up. Mulder hung up and dialed her mobile phone, fidgeting with   
the torn dustjacket while the phone rang. "This reminds me of   
the night before Junior Prom," he said, which got no noticeable   
reaction from Davis. Scully would have thought it was funny.   
  
At last a woman answered. "Hello?" She said.   
  
"Hi -- is this Brenda?"  
  
A static-filled pause followed. "Who is this?" the woman asked.   
Mulder got the impression that if he gave the wrong answer she'd   
hang up and call the cops. He supposed a lot of ex-addicts had   
people they'd rather not take phone calls from.   
  
"I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI. I'm helping   
investigate Kristie' Herron's death and I wanted to ask you a few   
questions," he said.  
  
"This is a federal case?" For some reason she sounded pleased.   
"Then you nailed McBer."   
  
"What makes you say that?" Mulder thought he'd managed to keep   
the excitement out of his voice. He wished to God he was   
recording this phone call.  
  
"You don't *know?* His connections to the 'Columbian export   
business,'" Brenda said. She had a deep, husky voice, like that   
of a woman who'd long been a heavy smoker. "I hoped you'd   
caught whichever one of them did it."  
  
"So you think McBer ordered a hit," Mulder said. Davis was   
trying to keep one eye on the road and one eye on him. Mulder   
wondered what the detective would have paid for a speaker phone   
just then.  
  
"She lived out here all her life. Don't expect me to believe she   
walked off that cliff by accident," Brenda said.  
  
"Did she say anything that made you think she was afraid?" Mulder   
asked.  
  
"Yeah, she did. When she called me Tuesday night," Brenda said.   
  
"What time?"  
  
"6:30 maybe -- no, 7, because it was already getting dark. It was   
weird because just a couple days before she told me she wasn't   
afraid of him anymore, that she was looking forward to putting   
him away. Then all of a sudden she tells me she's not   
testifying; she's backing out; she's calling the D.A. to tell him   
the deal's off. I told her, 'Girl, this is your *life.* The D.A.   
can reinstate those charges against you as fast as he dropped   
'em,' and she said she'd rather go to prison than get shot in an   
alley. I was sure McBer had gotten to her somehow. I asked her,   
'Who called you, Kristie? Who's threatening you?' But she kept   
saying, 'Nobody, nobody, nobody.' She never would tell me what   
scared her so bad, but I got her to put off calling the D.A. I   
wish I hadn't, now."  
  
"You couldn't have known what would happen," Mulder said.   
  
"No." Brenda's brash voice had grown quiet. "You'll get him,   
won't you? He's not going to get away with what he did?"  
  
"We're going to do everything we can," Mulder said. "Is there   
anything else you can remember, something somebody said, even if   
it didn't seem important at the time?"   
  
"I've been trying to think, but I can't come up with anything   
that would prove he did it. It's just a strong gut feeling.   
Believe me, if I could hand him over to you on a silver platter   
I would," she said.   
  
Mulder thanked her and gave her instructions on how to contact   
him in case she thought of anything else. He pulled a notepad   
from his coat pocket and scratched a few notations into it.   
  
Davis seemed to be having trouble focusing on the road. "Well,   
what did you get?" he asked.  
  
"Enough to make me really interested in what McBer was doing last   
Tuesday," Mulder said, not bothering to look up from the paper.   
He'd often claimed his inner child was a little shit, and he was   
enjoying the detective's fidgeting immensely.   
  
There was only one ferry company that made runs to Martha's   
Vineyard during the off-season, and Mulder dialed its number from   
memory. It didn't take long for the receptionist to find a deck   
hand who remembered a man in a wheelchair driving a specially   
modified Ford Prospector van. The van required a double-wide   
parking space so the chair lift could operate, an accommodation   
that might have been difficult on a more crowded run. The van   
and its driver were so unusual that the ferry worker could give   
the exact time and date he'd seen them: Tuesday, April 11, at the   
10:45 a.m. Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven crossing.   
  
Mulder shared this information with Davis, who made a few calls   
of his own to determine Kristie's schedule on the 11th. Before   
they reached Edgartown they had a critical window of time:   
between 6:10, when Kristie clocked out at her job at a grocery   
store in Aquinnah, and just before 7 p.m. when she arrived home.   
The drive itself should not have taken more than 15 minutes.   
  
By the time they pulled into the lot behind the Dukes County   
House of Correction, Davis had stopped giving Mulder those dry,   
knowing looks. Clearly, Mulder had come a long way from the   
nutcase in the autopsy bay in the detective's estimation. As   
they stepped out of the car into the cutting spring wind, Davis   
asked, "What did you leave the BSU to do, again?"  
  
"I work on the X-Files Unit," Mulder said, shrugging his coat   
more squarely onto his shoulders. "I chase aliens. I thought   
they'd told you that."  
  
"Aliens," Davis said. He didn't seem sure whether Mulder was   
serious or not.  
  
"Aliens, mutants . . . we get a pretty good variety of cases,   
really," Mulder said, leading the way toward the small, unmarked   
door in the back of the building. The Dukes County Jail did not   
look like a lock-up. One hundred and twenty-five years old, it   
had been built to resemble a whaling captain's house, complete   
with a fanlight over the door and imposing white columns at the   
corners of the front porch.   
  
Mulder hit the buzzer that would alert the jail staff that they   
were waiting. He turned to Davis, who stood with his hands   
tucked into his armpits. The bright sunshine gave hardly any   
warmth at all. "I had a case similar to this once," Mulder said.   
"A quadruple amputee who was able to master the art of astral   
projection decided to settle some old scores by committing   
several murders. I admit I was worried about how to get charges   
filed, but one of his victims solved the problem by getting up   
out of his hospital bed and shooting the guy. It's sort of a   
story about overcoming obstacles."  
  
To his credit, Detective Davis simply would not be shocked. He   
squinted up at Mulder and said, "I suppose you're going to tell   
me McBer can do this too?"  
  
"Of course he can't," Mulder said, "It's obvious the cuts on   
Kristie's body were made by somebody with limited strength and   
mobility. You think that in his revenge fantasies McBer would   
give himself the same physical disabilities he has in life? Come   
on. That's why I classify paranormal phenomena by motivation   
whenever possible. It saves so much time that might be wasted in   
empty conjecture."  
  
Whatever Davis' reply would have been, it was forestalled when   
the door opened and a brown-shirted corrections officer leaned   
out. "Agent Mulder and Detective Davis?" the officer said.   
Mulder and Davis produced their badges. "Follow me," the c.o.   
said.   
  
The room beyond was a kind of wire-mesh cage with a bank of metal   
drawers along one wall for officers to lock their weapons in. As   
they disarmed, Davis glanced up at Mulder and muttered something   
about the Justice Department that ended with, "Only under   
Clinton."   
  
The c.o. produced a jangling collection of keys and opened the   
door to the cage, then the ordinary wooden door that led to the   
jail's cramped office space. Among the too-numerous desks stood   
large group of officers, some wearing the browns of the Sheriff's   
Department and some in the blues of the State Police. Joe Luce   
caught his eye and nodded at him. Joe was in civilian clothes,   
jeans and a sweatshirt printed with the logo of a local marina.   
He looked about as tired as Mulder felt.   
  
"Mr. Mulder," a woman said. Mulder looked over and saw Liz   
Hawley, late of the West Tisbury PD, wearing the star-shaped   
badge of the Dukes County sheriff. Hawley had been one of the   
people most interested in charging Mulder with the murder of his   
father. She was a heavy woman and the close-fitting shirt and   
slacks of the Sheriff's uniform didn't suit her, but there was   
clearly muscle under her bulk. Mulder wouldn't have wanted to   
tangle with her in a dark alley. She was giving him a cold stare   
right out of "High Noon."   
  
"Sheriff Hawley," Mulder said.   
  
"Chief Luce here tells us that your background at the FBI may   
help us pull a couple of investigations out of the fire. If you   
have any ideas, we'd sure like to hear them," she said.   
  
//And then one of the boys'll git us a rope . . .// "Give me half   
an hour with McBer's file. I'll be able to give you   
recommendations after that," Mulder said.   
  
Hawley said, "I hope so."   
  
Mulder pretended not to notice the chilly looks the local   
officers gave him while a c.o. went to pull McBer's information   
off the fax machine. There were people who could see past the   
death of Mulder's father, but no Island cop was going to forget   
John Lee Roche or what had almost happened to an eight-year-old   
mainland girl. Under the circumstances, Mulder accepted their   
hostility as his due.   
  
The returning corrections officer handed him a stack of papers   
about the thickness of a small phone book. Mulder appropriated a   
desk for himself and settled his reading glasses on his nose. As   
he read through the blurry third-generation copies, he began to   
piece together the strategy he would use with their murder   
suspect.   
  
Soon his apprehensions began to fade. The case was not   
impossible, and as he would have told anyone who asked, he was   
very good at what he did.  
  
*****  
  
Scully did not get out of Nye House as quickly as she wanted to,   
mostly because there was nowhere to go. Her phone inquiries   
revealed that every store east of Vineyard Haven was shut down   
between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning. She had to ask   
Leigh for some gauze for her hands, which were throbbing despite   
the Tylenol-3 tablets the ER doctor had discharged her with. The   
little proprietress not only produced a first-aid kit but would   
not hear of her leaving without clean clothing. Most of the   
clothes Scully had with her were spattered with dried blood from   
the night before. Unfortunately, Leigh was about Scully's height   
but much heavier, while her daughter Tammy was considerably   
taller. Scully stood quietly by while Leigh rummaged in Tammy's   
closet, coming up with dusty clothes the young woman hadn't worn   
since high school.   
  
Leigh was more than happy holding up both ends of the   
conversation as she reminisced about her youth and Mulder's   
childhood. "He was a great favorite of my mother's. She used to   
have him recite "Annabelle Lee" for her. He could memorize   
practically anything if he read it once or twice."  
  
"Not Poe's "Annabelle Lee?" Scully asked, holding up a shapeless   
white sweater.   
  
"Oh, yes. I remember one evening we were out with our guests in   
the garden, watching the fireflies come out. Suddenly I heard my   
mother say, 'Aha!' and I turned to see her pull Fox from a clump   
of her raspberry bushes, still sucking juice off his fingers. He   
was about eight or nine years old, just a skinny little fellow in   
shorts with scratches on his knees. Mother pretended to be very   
cross and explained that this was little Fox Mulder from up the   
road and that he'd been into her raspberries again. She said,   
'Fox, I won't scold you on one condition -- you must recite   
"Annabelle Lee" for everyone.' We thought she was joking and   
everybody laughed. Then he actually began reciting it. He got   
such a smile on his face when he saw how amazed we were."   
  
Leigh shook out a dusty pair of stretch pants and said, "It *was*   
funny, hearing a fidgety little boy with two of his teeth missing   
say things like, 'this maiden she lived with no other thought,   
than to love and be loved by me.' I'm sure he had no idea what   
half of it meant. 'The sepulcher there by the sea' indeed! He   
was simply glad for all the attention and that he wasn't in   
trouble."  
  
Mulder had not retained that innocence for long, and Scully felt   
a pang of tenderness for him that was almost grief. "He never   
told me that story," she said. "He doesn't talk about his   
childhood much at all."  
  
"He may prefer not to think about it," Leigh said. "For a while   
he was a terribly, terribly unhappy boy. He did odd jobs for my   
parents when he came to stay with his father. He'd had some kind   
of falling out with the children he used to play with, and there   
really wasn't much for him to do except get into trouble -- and   
he was very good at doing that. Not that it was all his fault.   
There probably wasn't anywhere on the Island he could go without   
meeting with the kind of attention he didn't want.   
  
"Once I found him in reading a comic book in the loft of the   
utility shed. The picture on the cover was horrible -- bloody,   
screaming people running away from some kind of spaceship   
shooting fire. The way he was hiding with it made me think he   
wasn't supposed to have it, but he didn't seem to be enjoying it   
at all. How can I describe the look on his face? Like a man   
looking through the newspaper for an obituary he doesn't want to   
see. He seemed truly frightened, which was odd because he was a   
great big boy and here it was broad daylight. I didn't have the   
heart to tease him about it. All I asked was, 'How can you sleep   
at night after reading things like that?' He looked up at me and   
said, 'I can't.' I believed him. His face was so pale and he had   
dark circles under his eyes. Had it been any other boy I'd have   
thought he was into drugs, but somehow not Fox. He was quite   
rational, quite lucid . . . just so very frightened when there   
ought to have been nothing to fear. It was a little disturbing,   
really." Leigh shook her head. Her thick glasses magnified her   
eyes so that they looked like a sorrowful bug's. "I can't say I   
was pleased to hear that he'd gone off to England to study the   
criminally insane. I hoped he'd grow out of this . . . morbid   
phase. But he never has, has he?"  
  
"Not exactly," Scully admitted.  
  
"I know it can't all be my mother's fault, but I don't expect all   
that Poe at such a young age could have been good for him," Leigh   
said.  
  
"I've never heard him complain about it. Besides, Mulder finds   
what he does very rewarding. Well, he usually does," Scully   
said. There had been notable exceptions, the Siberian gulag and   
so on, not that she was going to mention such things. Even still,   
Leigh did not seem overly reassured.  
  
In the end Scully selected one of the least dusty-looking   
outfits, a pair of black stretch pants and an oversized white   
button-down that would have been the height of fashion in about   
1988. She thanked Leigh profusely for her help but insisted she   
had to do errands before the pain in her hands and bruised ribs   
became too much for her. Leigh let her go somewhat reluctantly.   
It seemed the detectives and technicians who made up the rest of   
Nye House's current clientele weren't any fun to talk to.   
  
As Scully walked out to the car in the icy sunlight, she wondered   
if Leigh had tried to tell stories about Mulder's childhood to   
the other officers, too. For his sake, she hoped not.   
  
***** 


	8. resurgam8

The office area of the Dukes County Jail was starting to look   
terrible, which was exactly what Mulder had in mind. At his   
direction, the other officers had removed all personal items from   
their desks and cleared a large space in the middle of the room.   
Mulder jostled some of the overhead fluorescent bulbs until the   
room's corners were enveloped in flickering dimness. When they   
were done, the only bright light shone directly down on a bare   
desk in the middle of the room.   
  
Mulder stood back, admiring his handiwork. Sheriff Hawley walked   
up to him and asked, "All right, Agent Mulder, what is this . . .   
haunted house supposed to accomplish?" She gestured at the dimly   
pulsing lights.   
  
Mulder couldn't resist milking her annoyance for just a moment by   
sitting down on the desk and polishing his glasses on the sleeve   
of his shirt. "It's meant to put McBer off-balance. He's a   
classic anti-social personality -- a born manipulator. He can't   
take control of a situation if he can't figure out what's going   
on."   
  
"And sitting in the dark will keep him from taking control,"   
Hawley said.   
  
"He won't be in the dark. He'll be right here in the light with   
me. You guys will be in the dark, able to see him a lot better   
than he'll be able to see you. It'll drive him crazy," he   
assured her.   
  
She gave him a cold, hard look. "You'd better be right," she   
said.  
  
"I'm right." Mulder turned to Joe, who was looking uncomfortable   
in his borrowed corrections officer uniform. "I want you to do   
two things when you bring him down. Let him know the OUIL is a   
misdemeanor. Treat it as a hassle between him and the judge that   
set his bond. If he figures out how much trouble he's in he's   
likely to clam up and call his lawyer. Then tell him how the   
detectives called in this crazy FBI man to talk to him. Say I   
chase aliens. Tell him I'm obsessed with serial killers and I   
sleep with bloody crime scene photos pinned to the ceiling over   
my bed. Whatever it takes to get him curious about me. He's   
going to have to sit and talk to me to find out if I live up to   
my reputation."   
  
"Aliens and serial killers. Got it."   
  
"Good luck, Igor," Mulder said. He thought Joe repressed a   
smile. Joey had been an inspired Igor to Mulder's Dr.   
Frankenstein, back in the days when their psychological   
experiments were designed to run off their tagalong little   
sisters.   
  
As Joe left to get their suspect, Mulder stood and set his folded   
his glasses down on the desk. Given the logistics of bringing a   
disabled man down the stairs, it would likely be at least five   
minutes before McBer arrived. Mulder was under enough pressure   
without spending the time before the interview under the hostile   
gaze of Hawley and her deputies. He excused himself to the   
officer nearest the door and walked into the hall.   
  
He had no particular destination in mind, but found he headed   
instinctively for the front door and the jail's oddly inviting   
front porch. The desk guard gave him a look of dull surprise as   
he signed in and out at the same time. "I'll be right back,"   
Mulder said.  
  
When he stepped out onto the porch, a gust of icy wind whipped   
his hair and flattened his clothes against his body. He had to   
shade his eyes from the brilliant sunlight, but exposure to the   
elements felt real and good. All around him lay Edgartown's   
empty waterfront streets. Restaurants, inns, and boathouses   
seemed well-kept but abandoned, waiting until the tourist season   
to unbolt their doors. Down Dock Street he could see the bare   
masts of boats moored at the public wharf, and beyond them,   
Katama Bay shining almost too brightly to look at.   
  
Home. He'd forgotten how much he loved this island, with its   
summer crowds and its wintertime desolation. It made him feel a   
fresh wave of remorse for Roche. He didn't remember much from   
the three-hour reaming he'd gotten from OPR after that case, but   
he did recall the general theme of betrayal. There was a long   
list of things he was supposed to have betrayed, which he should   
have paid more attention to since he'd been required to sign it.   
At the time, what had hurt most was that he had betrayed the   
trust of Caitlin and her mother. He had also betrayed the   
Vineyard and the people who had once been like family to him.   
Perhaps McBer was his chance to atone.   
  
Mulder took a deep breath and released it, willing himself to   
learn from the mistakes he'd made. Wanting something from men   
like Roche and McBer was like arming them. He had to distance   
himself from his desire to make good. //Don't think about what   
you want. Think about what he wants,// he told himself. He had   
to make McBer want to cooperate with him. //Just like selling   
Perrier to a drowning man,// he thought. He glanced at his watch   
and saw his grace time was nearly up. With regret, he turned and   
went back into the jail.   
  
No sooner had he settled himself at the office's newly-central   
desk than he heard voices in the hall. Joe opened the door and   
held it while a stocky, dark-haired man in a wheelchair pushed   
himself in. McBer was still in his civilian clothes: cowboy   
boots, black leather jacket, jeans, and a black T-shirt. His   
long ponytail and droopy mustache gave him a sinister appearance,   
but Mulder knew those would be gone at any future trial. Without   
all the fashion statements, McBer would be a fairly handsome man   
in his early 30's, sitting in a wheelchair. He might even manage   
to look harmless. Mulder wondered if Jaws the attorney would   
stoop to replacing the sleek-bodied chair McBer was using now   
with a clunky hospital model. Davis had been right -- any   
incriminating statements Mulder got out of this guy had better be   
so clean they squeaked.  
  
"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder from the FBI -- the guy I was   
telling you about," Joe said.  
  
McBer looked curious about him all right. Mulder wondered   
exactly what Joe had told him. He held his hand out. "John," he   
said. He'd decided that the false intimacy of calling McBer by   
his first name would be more demoralizing.  
  
The man took his hand and grimaced at the coldness of his skin.   
"Jesus -- where'd they find you, the morgue?" McBer asked.   
Mulder had put his glasses on after coming in, and they'd fogged   
over very slightly -- on the inside. He had hoped McBer would   
notice.   
  
"Actually I'm from D.C.," he said. G-Men, especially spooky   
ones, weren't supposed to have a sense of humor. "John, I want   
to ask you some questions. I'm going to need to tape our   
conversation, if that's all right with you."  
  
"Fine with me, so long as nobody fools with the tape," McBer   
said.  
  
"You can have your lawyer ask for a copy of it if you're   
worried," Mulder said. He turned the tape on and told McBer his   
rights, then asked him if he understood. He did. If this case   
went to hell, it would not be because Jaws made a successful bid   
to suppress the tape on 5th amendment grounds.   
  
"Could you state your full name please?" Mulder asked.  
  
"John Edward McBer."  
  
"Your address?"  
  
"2700 Pebblestone, Boston, 02108."  
  
The early questions were meant to set a rhythm, to get McBer   
comfortable.   
  
Mulder's dry voice and the regular ticks of the tape recorder   
created a sense of hypnotic calm. Although the suspect remained   
relaxed and cooperative, he stole occasional glances at the   
officers in the dim corners of the room. Mulder was glad he   
couldn't ignore them. They were present to suggest the weight   
and power of the justice system that lay behind the crazy FBI man   
with the tape recorder.   
  
"Do you know why you're here, John?" Mulder asked. His tone was   
almost gentle. People gave more interesting answers to a   
psychologist than to a cop.   
  
"He says you want to talk to me about some murder," McBer said,   
gesturing toward Joe. "I guess you're supposed to be the FBI's   
expert on sickos. Did you really catch a guy who put people's   
organs in a blender?"  
  
Mulder blinked in surprise. When had Joe heard of his   
involvement in that case? "You mean James Sproule? I didn't   
catch him personally; I profiled him. I studied his crimes until   
I felt I understood him."  
  
McBer looked somewhere between doubtful and disgusted. "You   
understand a guy who puts organs in a blender?"   
  
"As well as anybody sane can," Mulder said.  
  
"Uh-huh." McBer didn't seem convinced about the "sane" part.   
"So why'd he do it?"   
  
"He thought he needed to drink bodily fluids in order to   
survive," Mulder said.  
  
"And you understand that?" McBer asked. Mulder shrugged slightly   
as if he didn't see what the problem was.   
  
"You're either a liar or a psycho," said McBer.  
  
"I assure you that I'm neither," Mulder said. He looked intently   
into McBer's eyes a little longer than a sane person generally   
would. The other man appeared uncomfortable but did not look   
away. Before McBer could figure out how to respond, Mulder   
switched topics. "I have something I'd like you to look at,"   
Mulder said. He opened a manila envelope and brought out a   
picture of Kristie, clipped from her obituary in that morning's   
paper. He pushed it across the desk. McBer glanced at it but   
did not pick it up.   
  
"Do you know who she is?" Mulder asked.  
  
"No." He looked at the picture too long for that to be true.  
  
"Her name is Kristie Ann Herron. Sound familiar now?" Mulder   
leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, moving a bit further   
into the other man's space.   
  
"Oh, her. She dated this guy I used to know. I heard he went to   
prison. I haven't seen her in a couple of years."   
  
The line sounded rehearsed. Out of the corner of his eye Mulder   
thought he saw Davis writing something in a notebook. He made a   
point of turning to look, and McBer looked too. Good.   
  
"Kristie was scheduled to testify against you in a murder trial.   
Did you know that?" Mulder asked.  
  
McBer managed a rueful laugh that sounded almost natural. He   
seemed to gain confidence as he spoke: "Unfortunately. Look,   
Agent Mulder, that case was garbage. They've got a little bit of   
circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a cokehead. I mean,   
if she had all the information she said she had, why didn't she   
go to the police with it three years ago, when this supposedly   
happened? Why did she wait until she was facing time on   
possession charges before she told anybody? She made it up. To   
be honest, I'm surprised the prosecutor took the case -- unless   
she was paying him in kind, if you know what I mean."   
  
Cold fury made Mulder long to pick McBer up and punch his lights   
out, wheelchair or no wheelchair. //Do not react. Don't give   
him any emotional response at all.// He thought of Scully   
sitting next to him during the Roche interview, sympathetic and   
rock steady. The memory dissipated some of the rage and reminded   
him how to behave. //Let McBer fling shit. It's not going to   
stick.// His voice remained nearly neutral as he said, "If she   
made it up, it's strange she knew so much about the crime scene."  
  
"Maybe she shot this narc. Maybe she saw Brian do it and she's   
protecting him. How would I know? All I know is it wasn't me."   
There was a hostile look in his eyes that told Mulder they were   
treading on dangerous ground. If he spooked McBer too much about   
the '97 murder charge, he'd take the 5th and call Jaws.   
  
Mulder backed off for the moment. "When was the last time you   
saw Kristie?" he asked.  
  
McBer shrugged. "I kind of distanced myself from that crowd   
about two years ago. I had a little bit of trouble back in '93,   
and some friends finally convinced me I had to watch what company   
I was in. They'll take you down for just sitting in a car with a   
guy who's dealing, you know?"  
  
"So you saw her last in 1998," Mulder said.  
  
"I guess. Maybe. I mean I didn't really know her that well.   
It's possible there was a party or something and she was there   
and I just didn't notice," McBer said.  
  
"Did you come out to the Vineyard to see her?" Mulder asked.  
  
"No. I came out to visit a friend, Chuck Penry in Vineyard   
Haven. His number's 508-693-5767 if you want to call him."   
Mulder wrote down the number, along with a shorthand note about   
McBer's alternating vagueness and excessive helpfulness. That   
was a classic sign that a suspect was on the defensive, seeking   
to direct the interrogation. Whether or not McBer had sensed his   
reaction to the comment about Kristie, Mulder had not lost   
control of the interview.   
  
Without looking up from his notepad, Mulder asked, "When did you   
get here?" This was a critical question, and he didn't trust   
himself not to telegraph his interest if he looked McBer in the   
eye.   
  
He heard McBer's clothing rustle as he shifted position.   
"Yesterday."  
  
"What time?"  
  
"The afternoon -- I don't know. You could ask Chuck. Maybe he   
could tell you." Mulder was pretty sure Chuck had been coached   
to tell him something or other. He made a note to find out what   
Chuck Penry did for a living.   
  
Mulder opened his manila folder and removed two pages he'd   
printed out on Hawley's computer. One was the web page of the   
Three Sisters Market where Kristie had worked. The photo   
included a partial image of the store's parking lot, for which   
Mulder thanked any deity that might exist. He was pretty sure   
McBer had approached Kristie there. The other page was a   
calendar for April, 2000. He'd circled Tuesday the 11th in red   
marker, and wrote "6:15 p.m." in the date box.   
  
As soon as Mulder set the pages down on the desk, McBer became   
very still. He looked steadily at the picture of the grocery   
store, and Mulder could almost see the wheels of calculation   
turning in his mind. "What's that about?" McBer asked, gesturing   
at the papers.  
  
"Do you remember what you were doing on this date?" Mulder asked,   
tapping the calendar square with the red markings.   
  
"I was home," McBer said.  
  
"Alone?"  
  
"No, I was fucking every member of the Dallas Cowgirls   
cheerleading squad. Yes, I was alone," McBer said.  
  
Mulder sat back, taking some of the pressure off McBer by moving   
away. His goal was to wear the man down slowly, not drive him   
into a panic that would make him refuse to cooperate. "You   
understand you're not accused of anything but the drunk driving   
charge and the other charge in Suffolk County," Mulder said. He   
consciously avoided the word "murder."   
  
"Yes." McBer seemed to relax a little.  
  
"Your cooperation is purely voluntary -- this guy let you know   
that, right?" Mulder asked, gesturing at Joe.   
  
"Yes," McBer said.   
  
"If you can help us rule you out, then we can just drop this and   
it won't go any further," Mulder said.   
  
"Fine. I've had nothing to do with her," McBer said looking at   
Kristie's picture. Significantly, he didn't ask what Mulder was   
going to rule him out as.   
  
Mulder returned to safe questions for a while, asking how long   
McBer had known Chuck Penry, what the two had planned to do on   
the Island, and so on. He pushed the printout sheets to a corner   
of the desk where McBer would have to turn slightly to see them.   
Even though they were out of his direct line of sight, the man   
clearly found them distracting.   
  
After a time, McBer stopped giving long answers to anything. The   
scare of seeing the circled date was starting to work on him.   
Mulder decided it was time to close in. "Do you know what   
happened to her, John?" he asked, pushing Kristie's picture more   
squarely in front of her suspected killer.  
  
"She's dead," McBer said.  
  
"When did you find out?"  
  
"Friday."  
  
"Did somebody tell you?" Mulder got no immediate answer. He   
prompted, "Was it in the newspaper . . .?"   
  
"It was in the paper."  
  
Mulder wrote that down. "Which one?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"They run this picture with it?" Mulder asked, pointing to the   
obituary photo.   
  
"No."  
  
"A different one?"  
  
"It might have been a different one." Only a local paper would   
bother to run a victim's picture. If Kristie's death had been in   
the Boston papers at all, the article would have been buried on a   
back page. McBer hadn't quite admitted he'd been on the Vineyard   
before Saturday afternoon, but it was a start. Davis was   
scribbling something again.  
  
"Do you remember how she died?" Mulder asked.  
  
McBer shook his head slightly. "She fell over a cliff or   
something. I don't know." His failure to mention the knife   
wounds was the first indication of his innocence so far.   
  
Mulder leaned forward on the desk again, placing his folded hands   
at the top edge of Kristie's picture. He spoke very gently, "Did   
you kill her, John?"  
  
McBer didn't meet his eyes. "No."  
  
"Did you plan to kill her?"   
  
"No."  
  
"Did you threaten her?"  
  
"I never even saw her." McBer spoke through his clenched teeth,   
looking away at the printed calendar with its red ink markings.  
  
"You want to hear a theory of mine?" McBer looked up at him. His   
expression probably mirrored that of the murdered narcotics agent   
as he'd watched the specially modified van roll slowly to a stop.   
"I think you came here from Woods Hole at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday   
the 11th. You saw your friend Chuck and you made some   
'arrangements' with him. About 5:30 you got in the van, drove   
out to the Three Sisters Market in Aquinnah and waited for   
Kristie to get off work. You parked behind her car and sat with   
the engine running." Mulder said. He wasn't sure McBer was   
breathing. The look of horrified fascination on his face told   
Mulder he hadn't missed yet. He continued, "She came out at   
around a quarter after six, and you rolled down the window and   
called her name. To soften her up you reminded her you knew her   
secret -- that she'd lost a baby last year in Boston. Did it   
make her cry, John?"   
  
It seemed to take McBer a moment to realize he'd been asked a   
question. "I don't know what you're--" he began, but Mulder cut   
him off.  
  
"While you had her there, trapped and scared, you leaned close to   
her and said, 'You'd better call the D.A. and tell him the deal's   
off. Otherwise you'll end up just like that narc.'" Mulder   
leaned in and pronounced the words in a menacing whisper, as   
McBer probably had. McBer's jaw dropped. He looked as if he   
half expected Mulder to stick out a forked tongue at him. "The   
threat involved being shot in an alley, didn't it, John? Or was   
the place you shot the narcotics officer more like an access road   
between warehouses?"  
  
"I didn't shoot anybody," he said weakly.  
  
"Did you push Kristie Herron over a cliff?" Mulder asked.  
  
"I didn't -- I can't. How am I supposed to get to the edge of a   
cliff?" McBer asked, holding his hands out to indicate his   
wheelchair.   
  
"If you're telling me it's impossible, then you're talking to the   
wrong guy. I see impossible things happen every day," Mulder   
said. He consciously imitated Skinner as he sat back and glared   
at the man. Skinner had a glare like a scalpel.  
  
"You're crazy," McBer said. He turned to Joe and said, "This   
guy's a psycho." Joe didn't look at him. Mulder watched real   
horror cross McBer's face as he realized he might get away with   
one murder he'd committed only to have some nutcase FBI man get   
him convicted of another murder he hadn't.   
  
"Are you willing to take a polygraph to prove I'm crazy?" Mulder   
asked. McBer looked uneasy but tempted. "You haven't got much   
to lose. We can't use the results against you in court."   
  
"A polygraph about what?" McBer asked.  
  
"Kristie Herron. Whether you killed her. Nothing about the   
other charge," Mulder said. Actually, he was worried that with   
three years to justify the shooting to himself, McBer could beat   
the box on the '97 murder.   
  
McBer seemed to consider his options. "Fine. I'll do it," he   
said. Mulder heard uniforms rustling all around the room as   
officers could hardly contain their surprise.   
  
"Let's be clear about this -- you're cooperating voluntarily.   
You can call a lawyer at any time. Understand?" Mulder asked.   
McBer nodded. Mulder asked, "Could you reply verbally for the   
tape?"  
  
"Yes. I got it."   
  
Mulder looked up at Joe and said, "Go." Outside McBer's line of   
vision, Joe gave him a thumbs-up.   
  
"Come on, Mr. McBer. We're going to a room down the hall," Joe   
said, leading the other man to the door. The polygraph   
specialist from the Sheriff's Department was already standing by   
with a list of questions Mulder had written. The sooner this was   
done, the better -- before their suspect had a chance to change   
his mind.   
  
After McBer left, Mulder signed off on the tape and shut the   
machine down. The interview had taken just over 40 minutes.   
That wasn't bad, even for him. He hadn't even used up both sides   
of the tape. To his gratified surprise, a couple of people   
started to applaud, but icy stares from several officers cut the   
clapping off quickly. The quiet that followed was strangely   
awkward and people began a dignified push to get out of the room.   
  
Mulder took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Suddenly he was   
very tired. He heard footsteps on the hard carpet near the desk   
and looked up. Sheriff Hawley stood there, looking at him in the   
way Scully's brother Bill generally did. Mulder thought of it as   
the "I'd like to squash you like a bug" look. "Sheriff," he   
said.  
  
"You sure know how to get what you want from people, don't you,   
Mr. Mulder?" she asked. "I always wondered how you managed to   
stay on this side of the cell bars. I guess now I know." He   
couldn't think of any good replies, which seemed to intensify her   
contempt. She turned on her heel and walked out.   
  
Soon Mulder was alone in the dimly lit office. //Yeah,// he   
thought, //I really know how to win friends and influence   
people.//  
  
*****  
  
Scully parked in the tiny gravel lot behind Oriel Photography,   
the little housefront shop Irv Stuckey ran in Menemsha. It   
didn't surprise her that the man had to take a night job. The   
village seemed to consist of a few dozen houses clustered around   
the edge of an ocean inlet. She doubted it was much of a tourist   
magnet even in summer. At the moment the only signs of   
habitation were a couple of very cold-looking men standing on the   
dock that ringed the harbor, fishing through holes chopped in the   
ice.   
  
The photography shop was a squat, two-story gray house with an   
outdoor staircase that led to a separate entrance on the second   
floor. According to Leigh, Stuckey and his ex-wife lived in the   
upper story. Scully got out of the car and headed for the   
stairs. She found it eerie to be in the middle of a town and   
hear nothing but the wind and the sound of gravel crunching   
beneath her feet. It reminded her of Mulder's childhood   
nightmare about being the last person alive in the world. She   
wondered how many year-round residents of Menemsha had the same   
dream.   
  
The cold made her bruised ribs ache as she climbed the weathered   
steps that zig-zagged up the back of the house. A rusty coffee   
can full of cigarette butts rested on the landing at the top.   
Unable to find a doorbell, she tapped on the door's glass panel   
with her gloved fingertips. Fortunately, the pane was loose and   
it rattled loudly.   
  
"Mr. Stuckey?" she called. "Mr. Stuckey, I'm Special Agent Dana   
Scully with the FBI." She waited for several seconds but got no   
reply. Had he even heard her? The stitches on her knuckles   
prevented her from knocking, so she tapped again and said, "I   
work with Fox Mulder. I'm here to talk to you about the South   
Road Ghost."  
  
Scully thought she heard voices inside. She was about to tap a   
third time when a gray-haired woman with a face like a bulldog's   
peered out of the door's little window. She heard the rattling   
of locks being undone, and then the door jarred open a crack.   
The bulldog-faced woman was quite short. She glared up at Scully   
and said, "Store's closed. This is a private entrance."   
  
"I know, ma'am. I'm looking for Mr. Irv Stuckey. I was told he   
lived here." Scully showed the woman her badge and ID.  
  
"You arresting him for something?" the woman asked. She sounded   
hopeful.   
  
"He contacted my partner and me about a case. I only want to talk   
to him," Scully said.  
  
"A 'case?'" the woman asked. Suddenly she seemed to make a   
connection. "You're from Washington," she said.  
  
"That's right, ma'am. From the FBI's X-Files Unit," Scully said.  
  
The woman scowled and said, "Oh, for Christ's sake." She turned   
and bellowed into the house, "Stuckey! The Mulder kid sent some   
girl to talk to you about your fairy story."  
  
A muffled voice replied, "Would you just shut up and send her   
down, Emma?"  
  
"He'll see you downstairs," Emma said, and slammed the door.  
  
"Charming," Scully said under her breath. There was nothing else   
to do but walk back downstairs and around to the front entrance.   
  
The sheltered front porch was probably nice enough in summer, but   
at the moment a cold wind coming off the water cut right through   
Scully's coat and her borrowed clothes. Trying to keep her back   
to the weather, she tugged the string of the heavy iron pull-bell   
that was bolted to the doorframe. It sounded like what it had   
likely been, a 19th century fire alarm. She heard a man inside   
say, "All right! All right -- keep your pantyhose on."   
  
A little man with wispy gray hair opened the door and squinted at   
her out of the house's dimness. He was wearing button-down long   
underwear and bulky gray socks. "Mr. Stuckey?" Scully asked.  
  
"So you read my fax after all," he said.   
  
"Yes. I'd like to talk with you about that," Scully said.  
  
"Come in," Irv said, moving aside out of the doorway. Scully   
walked past him into the shop. The windows had all been covered   
with an assortment of curtains, blankets, and sheets, but light   
from the open door revealed an old-fashioned cash register   
sitting on a counter at the back of the room. A couple of space   
heaters glowed orange but illuminated nothing. Once she was   
inside with the door closed, the gloom was formidable.   
  
"Give me just a minute," Irv said. He walked back to a   
curtained-off inner door and passed through it into some unseen   
room.   
  
As her eyes adjusted, Scully realized there was a camp cot near   
the space heaters. Irv had clearly just gotten out of it, half-  
tumbling its blankets to the floor. Somehow knowing this room   
served as Irv's bedroom made her uncomfortable. She ran her   
hands over the wall by the door until she found a light switch.   
  
When she flicked it on she found herself in a tiny photo gallery.   
The walls were covered with matted prints, and photography   
equipment rested on shelves behind the counter. A camera with a   
long telephoto lens was mounted on a tripod in the corner.   
  
Scully looked over some of the framed prints. Many were standard   
photos of local architectural detail -- wood-shingled Victorian   
house spires, delicate fanlights above lavender or teal-painted   
doors, a round window behind the wrought-iron railing of a   
widow's walk.   
  
The nature photos were more to her liking. Most were in black   
and white, and they tended to have a stark, almost Japanese   
asymmetry to them. One print drew her particular attention.   
It was of an ice sheet with an irregular hole punched in it.   
The water inside was the strange, luminous green of the   
ice-locked sea, and deep below its surface lay something dark.   
No matter how hard Scully looked at the dark shape she could not   
make out its outline. A rock? A spar? It created a sinister   
impression, as if it were waiting for someone to remain too long   
by the hole. She glanced at the title, written in pencil on the   
mat: "Window Through The Ice."   
  
She frowned and looked up at the other pictures on the wall. For   
the first time she realized how many of them were of literal   
windows, and the telephoto lens in the corner took on a darker   
significance. The only human subject in the whole collection was   
a young girl, or rather her eyes, which were opened so wide they   
reflected back a tiny, distorted image of the photographer.   
Scully looked for a few seconds before turning away in distaste.   
She had the feeling there was some subtle violence in the   
picture, as if Irv were trying to peer inside the girl. She   
thought that if it had been up to her, she would have questioned   
Irv Stuckey very carefully after Samantha Mulder disappeared.  
  
Soon the man himself returned from the back room, tucking the   
tails of his flannel shirt into his creased and faded jeans. Two   
dogs followed him, an enormous black Lab and a little, curly-  
haired mutt. The mutt trotted boldly up and sniffed Scully's   
shoe.   
  
"Step in something?" Irv asked.  
  
"Not that I know of." Normally she liked dogs, but she was   
starting to make up her mind not to like Irv's. She didn't   
appreciate this one getting its wet nose all over the navy   
leather of her pump.   
  
"Hey, Meatloaf, back off," Irv said. The dog scooted back   
slightly on its stubby legs, wagging its tail so hard its whole   
butt wiggled. "Looks like you've been having some adventures out   
here, Miss Scully," Irv said.  
  
Scully didn't like his little smirk, and she fixed him with as   
cold a look as she could manage. "What makes you say that?" she   
asked. She'd purposely kept her gloves on her bandaged hands in   
order to conceal the kind of adventures she'd been having.   
  
"You're wearing someone else's pants," Irv said, chuckling.  
  
"Excuse me?" She briefly considered slapping him. Federal   
agents weren't allowed fits of ladylike indignation, which was a   
pity.   
  
"Come on now, look at you. You've got on your tailored coat and   
your hair done just so. You got on shoes that match your   
handbag, but none of it matches those baggy black pants. They   
give you elephant knees, girl. You take a spill in the bog and   
have to go slumming at the church bazaar?" Irv asked.   
  
Scully willed herself to stay professional and preserve some   
dignity. "I can't remember the last time a man paid so much   
attention to my outfit, Mr. Stuckey," she said. She didn't know   
why she was surprised. All around her was evidence of Irv's   
relentless gaze.   
  
"Oh, I notice all kind of things," he said. He smiled at her   
like an evil gnome.   
  
She was determined to steer the conversation back to the case.   
"I'd like you to explain some of the things in your fax, like   
what you meant about 'what happened in Boston,'" Scully said.   
  
"Oh, that. The Herron girl had a child that died -- it was the   
dope that did it in. I don't think she ever did tell her folks.   
A shame, the parents always seemed decent. Of course, you never   
can tell," Irv said.   
  
"And how do you know all that?" Scully asked.  
  
His smile broadened. "I've got ways and ways," he said.   
  
"And I've got ways of reporting you for obtaining medical records   
under false pretenses," Scully said.  
  
She was gratified when that wiped the grin off his face. "I   
never did," he said. "It's part of her police record. The   
hospitals report these women when they come in pregnant, higher   
than a kite. They throw some of 'em in jail, but not pretty   
girls with folks on the Vineyard, I guess."  
  
"You wrote away for her police record?" Scully asked.  
  
"Sure. Sunshine laws are the best thing that ever happened to   
this country. Sometimes they want you to pay through the nose   
for copying, but it's usually worth it. I'm sure Fox would agree   
with me," Irv said.   
  
Scully thought the comparison did Mulder a great disservice.   
"Mulder doesn't go prying into the police records of his   
neighbors," she said.  
  
"Oh, yes he does. That boy never could leave a secret alone.   
Being an FBI agent and all, he doesn't even have to pay. I bet   
on his off-hours he does nothing but pry. Well, almost nothing   
but," Irv said. Scully pretended not to see his knowing little   
leer, but it irked her. This was exactly the kind of subtle   
harassment she dreaded having to face from her co-workers, much   
less people she was interviewing.   
  
She gave him her best icy glare as she tried to drag him back on   
track. "Explain to me about the South Road Ghost."  
  
Irv shrugged. "What's there to tell? They say women who've   
murdered their children hear Mary Brown calling to them from deep   
in the woods. It's always a wild night in winter, and some say   
you can hear the voices of those dead babies crying in the wind.   
If a woman follows the voices she'll be found slashed to death   
the next day. I once spoke to an old down-island woman who knew   
someone it happened to. Deaf lady -- never heard a thing in her   
life but her own dead child calling her name. She went out into   
the woods around the graveyard and never came back."  
  
Irv's smirk returned as he said, "You know, you ought to ask Fox   
about it. Ask him what his mama heard out in those trees. After   
all this time they won't find that girl of hers, not above the   
sod, anyway."  
  
"Mr. Stuckey, that is enough," Scully snapped. She was surprised   
at the depth of her anger at him; she was nearly shaking with it.   
"The rumors you've spread have caused his family a lot of pain.   
It's been 26 years, and it's time to stop." Leigh Williams had   
told her how Mulder had gone from a friendly little boy to a   
withdrawn and unhappy adolescent. How much of that suffering was   
Irv Stuckey directly responsible for?   
  
His pale blue eyes widened a moment at her vehemence, but he   
wasn't off-balance long. "You're protective, aren't you?" he   
said slyly. "I expect he likes that. He always did have a thing   
for mother-figures. I suppose that's only natural, Teena being   
the way she was. Tell me, is he an enemas and plastic pants   
boy?"   
  
"What?" was all Scully could think to say. Irv had gotten so   
inappropriate she hardly knew how to respond.  
  
"Well, never mind -- it was his father who made him the time-bomb   
he is, anyway. I'm surprised the FBI lets him walk around armed   
with all those excessive force citations in his file," Irv said.  
  
"Where did you --" Scully began, then she realized she knew. "You   
made a FOIA request for the contents of his personnel file."   
  
"He's a federal employee. His file's a public record," Irv said.   
"You'd be surprised at the kind of information you can get if you   
ask: probate records, filings with friend of the court . . ." He   
gave Scully a look as if she was supposed to read something into   
that. "Of course, they always ink out the names of minors. Fox   
has a juvenile record in Connecticut, for instance, but it's   
sealed. Oh -- you didn't know that? Ask him about Fairfield   
County Juvenile Court sometime, or about the time he poisoned the   
cat. I think that's what set old Sheriff Luce sniffing after   
him, more than anything else."  
  
Scully forced herself to keep her mouth shut while she recited   
one of the Fatima prayers to herself, the one about people who   
needed God's mercy. //You have too little respect for this man   
to let him enrage you,// she thought. When she spoke it was   
deliberately, but without anger. "Mr. Stuckey, what did you call   
us out here for? If it was just to assassinate my partner's   
character, then you're wasting my time and yours."  
  
"I called you out here to find the truth," he said. "Isn't that   
what you people do? I've seen your file too, Miss Scully.   
You're a scientist who's lately become interested in . . . how   
did they put it, 'extreme possibilities.' If there's something   
out there, you have to *know.* Or do 'Texas killer bees' not   
ring a bell?"   
  
"I wouldn't be in such a hurry to get that information if I were   
you," Scully said. "People have died because they knew too much   
about what's in those files."  
  
"You're lovely when you're threatening, but I'll take my chances,"  
Irv said. "And since we're talking about the South Road Ghost,   
I wanted to ask you something. I know you tried and failed to   
get custody of a child who died in 1998. You claimed she was   
your daughter, though your personnel file says you have no   
children. Last night when you were out ruining your real   
clothes, did you hear her calling you?"  
  
Scully felt the blood drain from her face. For a moment she had   
no words to respond. Irv smiled, clearly enjoying her helpless   
outrage. When she finally found her voice, it was only to say,   
"Go to Hell."   
  
She walked out of the house and slammed the door behind her. By   
the time she got to the car, she was crying. It was one thing to   
slander a grown man like Mulder, but to taunt Scully with her   
daughter's death was too cruel. Who had Emily ever hurt, that   
Irv Stuckey should gloat over her fatal illness? Scully's   
tires shot up arcs of gravel as she peeled out of the parking   
lot, determined not to give Irv the satisfaction of seeing her  
cry. As she turned into the street she saw his hand twitch a   
curtain closed over the window.  
  
***** 


	9. resurgam9

The overcrowded Dukes County Jail could spare no space for a   
break room, but it did have two vending machines in a stairwell.   
Mulder had gotten his first real meal of the day out of those.   
He sat on the stairs, finishing off a soggy chicken salad   
sandwich and a Pepsi. He hoped that the caffeine would help   
nurse his adrenaline rush along for a little while longer. He   
could already feel the bone-deep fatigue that would set in once   
that energy wore off.   
  
There was a fair chance that the interview he'd just done would   
only be round one. If the polygraph poked holes in McBer's story   
he might want to try and explain them away, and Mulder wouldn't   
deny him the opportunity. In his experience, just about every   
suspect who remained talkative after a bad polygraph convicted   
himself.   
  
He glanced at his watch and saw that it was after three. He   
wondered what Scully was doing. The last time he'd seen her he'd   
gotten the distinct impression she was trying to get rid of him.   
His phone was in his jacket pocket, lying on the steps beside   
him. He dug it out and dialed her cell number. After several   
rings a cheerful voice told him, "The cellular unit you are   
trying to reach is turned off or out of the service area."   
  
Mulder punched the "off" button and told himself not to read too   
much into that. Maybe she was sleeping. Probably Darkest   
Chilmark didn't even have a cell tower. Still, he couldn't shake   
the mental image of her wandering over some godforsaken up-island   
ridge, her injured hands tucked into her pockets for warmth,   
searching for something she didn't want to talk to him about.   
He'd done similar things before.   
  
It didn't mean he had to like it when she did them.   
  
His thoughts were interrupted when Joe opened the door to the   
stairwell. Mulder stood up, dusting crumbs off his lap. "How'd   
it go?" he asked. He suspected that McBer and his accomplice   
had plotted against Kristie but were prevented from carrying out   
their plan by paranormal events. Conspiracy to commit murder   
could still draw a life sentence in Massachusetts, however.  
  
Joe seemed weary as he said, "McBer passed all the questions   
about the homicide. The box said he was telling the truth when   
he told us he didn't kill Kristie and didn't know who did."  
  
Mulder nodded. That fit with his earlier assessment of paranormal  
activity. "What about meeting her and making threats?"  
  
"He flunked."  
  
//Got the sonofabitch.// He felt a surge of energy, but the feeling  
was more grim than satisfying. Vindication was always bittersweet   
when you were a prophet of doom. "What about the contract part?   
You get him on hiring a killer?"   
  
The other man shook his head. "That one was inconclusive. What   
we've got is good enough for a warrant -- when the State Police   
go through his phone records maybe they can establish a   
connection to somebody."  
  
Mulder had his doubts, but he agreed it was worth a shot. "Does   
McBer want to talk to me some more?"  
  
"I think that's about that last thing he wants. When I left he   
was asking to call his lawyer. I think Davis is done with you   
for the day. Speaking of which, you know what time it is?" Joe   
pulled his pager from the pocket of his borrowed uniform and   
looked down at the screen as if it might bite.  
  
"It's about quarter after three," Mulder told him.  
  
"Oh, man . . ." Joe said, pushing the pager's display-change   
button again and again. "I had this thing turned off in the   
interview room. My sister's going to kill me. I'm supposed to   
be home by now. Someone has to stay with my mom while Cheryl   
goes to work."   
  
"Your mom's not sick, is she?" Mulder asked. He had always liked   
Mrs. Luce.   
  
Joe gave him a strange look. "It's just the MS. The same thing   
she'd had for 20 years."  
  
Mulder hadn't known she had anything. He tried to recall what he   
knew about multiple sclerosis, which wasn't much. "Is it bad?"   
he asked.  
  
"Your dad didn't tell you any of this?" Joe asked.   
  
"My dad and I didn't talk much," Mulder said. For years Mulder   
and his father saw each other only at weddings and funerals, and   
then it was pretty much just funerals. It got so whenever Mulder   
heard his father's voice on the phone he wondered who had died.  
  
"That's too bad," Joe replied. He seemed about to ask a   
question, but something in Mulder's expression must have made him   
change his mind. He looked away. "Anyway . . . I need to give   
Tom Brennan back his uniform. This thing is driving me crazy."   
He tugged at the jail officer's too-tight shirt.   
  
"Hey, Joe?"   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"You think your mom would mind if I went out there? Just to see   
her . . . you know. It's been a long time."   
  
"No, she wouldn't mind." He looked surprised but not displeased   
at the request. "She'd probably like that."   
  
Mulder was glad. He hadn't gotten over his own mother deciding   
that she never needed to see him again. He wanted somebody's   
mother to be happy to see him.  
  
*****  
  
Later, the two of them sat in Joe's blue Mercury, driving west on   
Rural Route 1 toward Chilmark. The first several minutes were   
quiet and awkward. Somehow the close confines of the car made   
all the things unsaid between them harder to ignore. Mulder   
spent the time watching the familiar, oddly-named cross streets   
go by: Quenomica; Old Purchase; Dark Woods Road.   
  
He broke the silence as they passed Martha's Vineyard Airport,   
roughly the halfway mark. "So, tell me about your mom," Mulder   
said, looking over at Joe.   
  
"Her health was really pretty good until recently," Joe said. He   
kept his gaze on the road, which probably made talking about this   
sort of thing easier. "Actually she used to drive a van a lot   
like McBer's until her coordination got so bad she couldn't stop   
at red lights anymore. That was scary as hell. She spun out on   
bone-dry pavement and put the van into a ditch." Joe shook his   
head. He had a slightly distant look in his eyes, as if he were   
seeing the accident all over again. "Cher and I had this whole   
care plan all worked out, but we were still thinking 'someday,'   
not 'today.' It didn't matter -- none of it went the way we   
thought it would, anyway. We both ended up moving back to the   
old house again, if you can believe that."  
  
Mulder tried to imagine himself moving back in with his mother at   
the age of 38. The idea was sobering. Joe continued, "We're   
lucky that Cheryl's a visiting nurse. Between me and her and her   
co-workers at VNA, Mom's got pretty close to round-the-clock   
care. Not that it always helps. The other week she accidentally   
put her hand down on a hot burner. The whole thing is making her   
nuts -- she's been on her own since my dad died in '66, and now   
all of a sudden she's dependent. Sometimes I think she hates us   
for trying to taking care of her. You know you try to prepare   
yourself for the role reversal when your parents get older, but   
until it happens to you, you have no idea."  
  
"I guess not," Mulder said. His own mother had chosen to die   
rather than reverse those particular roles with him.  
  
Joe glanced over, seeming embarrassed. "I'm sorry -- I didn't   
mean you personally had no idea. You just lost your mother. Of   
course you do."   
  
"No. My mother's death was kind of . . . sudden," Mulder said.   
He was unable to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice.  
  
"Oh."  
  
Awkwardness again. Mulder gave conversation another shot. "I   
was wondering, how did you find out about me profiling James   
Sproule?" he asked.  
  
"Your dad told me," Joe said.  
  
"You sure? I don't think I ever talked to him about that."  
  
"Of course I'm sure. He showed me the guy's mug shot in the   
paper. I said Sproule looked like a librarian, and he agreed   
with me. I was sure I'd never have pegged him."  
  
"My name didn't come up in the article, did it?" Mulder asked.   
He didn't see why it would, since he hadn't made the actual   
arrest. On the other hand, he didn't see how else his father   
could have known -- at least not through legitimate news sources.   
  
"To tell you the truth, I didn't read it. Your dad stopped by   
the station while I was trying to do about five other things. I   
looked at the picture, said the guy looked like a librarian, and   
said good for you -- you caught a maniac."  
  
"Did you and my dad talk often?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Not all that often. Every now and then."   
  
Mulder nodded. He preferred to think his dad never talked to   
anybody except at funerals. He didn't want that treatment to be   
especially for him.   
  
"Is it a problem?" Joe asked.  
  
Mulder turned to the window so his face wouldn't give anything   
away. "He didn't talk to me."  
  
They passed groves of tupelo trees and frost-covered cranberry   
orchards without speaking. At last, Joe said, "I was worried   
about that."  
  
"About what?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Sometimes I got the impression he hoped I would relay messages   
so he wouldn't have to call you himself. I told him I wasn't the   
person he should be talking to. I told him we weren't in   
contact, but it didn't seem to make a difference."  
  
Mulder kept his gaze focused on the landscape outside. With   
studied nonchalance, he asked, "What did he say?"   
  
"Different things. Positive things, mostly. He thought a lot of   
you."  
  
Mulder wanted to believe what Joe said was true. He wanted to   
believe a lot of things about his father. Finally he asked, "You   
still have a funny feeling about my dad and my sister's   
disappearance?"   
  
The question seemed to make Joe uncomfortable. "I don't know,   
Fox . . ."   
  
Mulder turned and glared him. "You 'don't know?' You guys   
practically ran my family out of town, and you don't know?"   
  
"I was ten years old when you lost your sister. I didn't know   
what I thought about anything. We had that fight in what --   
1978? It's been over longer than either of us was alive at the   
time. Can't you drop it?"   
  
"It's not over," Mulder said. He returned his gaze to the window   
and added, "It will never be over." Not so long as he   
remembered her.   
  
"The part about me being a smartass fifteen-year-old is over,"   
Joe said. "Thank God we don't have to stay the people we were 20   
years ago."  
  
The thought of two grown men, approaching middle age, scrapping   
like schoolboys in a sandlot was ridiculous. Joe had a point.   
Mulder glowered at the junction between earth and sky until he'd   
convinced himself that he was angry at fate and not the man next   
to him. Scully would tell him to relax: //Relax, Mulder. You   
can go kick Fate's ass another day.// He felt some of the   
tension leave his muscles. "Sorry."   
  
"It's all right," Joe said. "And I'm not jerking you around. I   
really don't know how to answer your question. None of it makes   
sense to me. Logic tells me it's not real likely your sister   
would vanish the way she did without your family being involved,   
but I saw what happened to your parents after they lost her. It   
was killing them. The police interviewed you guys separately,   
together, the day after it happened, six months after . . . .   
I know you've seen the interview transcripts because I'm the one   
who mailed them to you after you wrote for them under FOIA. The   
only story that changed was yours, and you went from remembering  
nothing to talking about bright lights and who-knows-what. Even   
that makes no sense at all. I can't explain any of it."  
  
Mulder didn't want to argue anymore. Joe's words made him feel   
very tired. "Welcome to my life," he said.  
  
*****  
  
The first several minutes at the Luce house were chaos -- Cheryl   
had to get to work, her kids were supposed to be at their   
father's, Joe offered to take them but didn't know who would stay   
with his mother, and Mrs. Luce kept insisting she did not need a   
babysitter. Mulder's offer to stay at the house was accepted   
with a gratitude that surprised him. He wasn't sure if this   
meant old grudges had truly been forgotten or if domestic turmoil   
had driven the Luce family to acts of insanity.  
  
At any rate, he and Mrs. Luce soon had the house to themselves.   
The two of them sat at the scarred oak dining table, he in a   
slat-backed chair, resting his chin in his hand, she in an   
electric scooter, running purple chenille yarn through a tabletop   
loom. Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" played faintly from a radio in   
the kitchen.  
  
"So what's that going to be?" he asked, gesturing at the purple   
fabric that was taking shape.  
  
She smiled as if the question amused her. "Maybe a placemat,   
maybe a scarf. Depends on how quickly I get tired of weaving it.   
Really it's just something to do with my hands." Despite Joe's   
concerns, she looked perfectly healthy. Her blue eyes were clear   
and alert, and she carried herself like a young pine: as if her   
resiliency more than made up for any strength lost to lack of   
straightness. Still, Mulder hadn't been quite prepared for her   
white hair or the way the bones in her hands stood out. It   
wasn't lost on him that the kitchen radio had a knitting needle   
taped on as an antenna extender. He wondered when she'd given up   
knitting.  
  
"You know I still have those mittens you made me," he said.   
Well, in a sense he still had them. He suspected they were in a   
box buried in a storage unit in Greenwich, Connecticut.   
  
She looked up at him. "Which ones?" Then she seemed to   
remember. "Oh! The ones where I let you pick the colors." Five-  
year-old Fox had picked every color she had, including the ones   
he'd never heard of: sepia, saffron, vermilion, aubergine.  
  
"They matched everything," he said.  
  
"Except each other. That's right."   
  
"I'm surprised you were so nice to me, considering," Mulder said.   
At age five, he'd been just as fond of asking impossible   
questions as he was at age thirty-eight, and he'd been less   
tactful at the time.   
  
"You were a good boy," said Mrs. Luce, as if laying to rest  
persistent rumors to the contrary.   
  
"Sure, good at driving you up a wall."   
  
She spoke in a comfortably distracted way as she tapped the   
newest row of yarn into place: "Mm -- you had an edge to you,   
yes, but I always thought there was a lot of anxiety behind that.   
Your mother seemed to be the same way: very intense, very --   
anxious to please, maybe?"  
  
Mulder smiled a little, remembering that side of her. "She had a   
greater interest in conformity than I did. I used to embarrass   
her." He remembered her reminding him to keep his inquisitive   
streak in check as she zipped up his jacket: "Don't ask about the   
accident or bother Mrs. Luce with questions. She has enough to   
worry about as it is. Remember, you're there to be polite and to   
help make Joey feel better. If he or Mrs. Luce wants to talk   
about the funeral they'll let you know, so don't bring it up.   
And Fox, do not ask questions about why God kills people before   
taking them to heaven or what it's like to be dead." Budding   
investigator that he was, the hush-hush treatment of death and   
dying had merely obsessed him with the subject.   
  
Trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible, he asked, "How   
well did you know my mother?"   
  
She paused in her work, perhaps hearing something significant in   
the question. "Reasonably well, though I can't say we were   
close. We never talked about much besides our children. Why do   
you ask?"  
  
"I guess . . ." He ran his fingertips over a dent in the table.   
Somehow, it was easier to talk when he wasn't looking at her. "I   
guess because lately I've been wondering how well I knew her."   
  
He heard her set down her shuttle. "Has something happened?"  
  
He hoped he'd said this enough times that he would stay calm when   
talking about it. "I lost her recently." The tremor was minor,   
but he could feel the telltale stillness inside of him, like   
something was in free fall. He briefly considered not going on.   
When he spoke again, his voice broke like glass: "She never told   
me she was sick."   
  
The pressure building in his chest was probably a sob, but he   
never found out if he contained it. A seizure-vision kicked in   
instead. The sensation of reality shifting was physical, like   
falling onto a slab of concrete and passing straight through.   
  
He was five years old, leaning with his back against the Luces'   
front door. The house smelled like funeral flowers. Mr. Luce's   
shoes, caked with dried mud, rested on a sheet of old newspaper   
beside him. The shoes made Fox uneasy. He didn't think they   
should be there.   
  
Flowers were sitting in vases and jars all over the house, but he   
couldn't talk about them because he wasn't supposed to say   
"funeral." He wasn't supposed to say "dying" or "dead" or   
"killed" either, but those words stayed in his head and worried   
him. What if he got confused and said something bad by accident?   
No, he should say 'by mistake' -- he wasn't supposed to talk   
about accidents, either.   
  
He had said and done some bad things at the funeral and his dad   
had taken him out and smacked him. He was ashamed of that. He   
hadn't been able to explain that the church was a bad place for   
him to be and that staying there had been like not being able to   
breathe. He thought Mr. Luce might feel the same way inside his   
wooden box.  
  
Fox heard grownup footsteps on the stairs and fought the urge to   
suck his fingers like a baby. He wrapped his hand around the   
doorknob instead. Mrs. Luce came downstairs, wearing jeans and a   
ponytail like a teenager, but with a laundry basket balanced on   
her hip like a mom.   
  
She stopped on the last step and asked, "What's the matter?"   
  
"Whose shoes are those?" Fox asked softly, although he was sure   
he knew.  
  
She looked at him a moment, then turned to look out the window at   
the squirrels snatching seeds out of the birdfeeder. Fox worried   
that she'd walk right by him without speaking. Sometimes his mom   
did that after he asked a bad question. That hurt his feelings   
worse than any spanking ever hurt.   
  
Instead, Mrs. Luce put down the basket and sat on the stairs.   
She looked like she might want to cry. "Those are Joey and   
Cheryl's daddy's shoes," she said.  
  
Fox's own daddy's shoes were in the same place at home. "Is he   
here?" he asked, still very quiet.  
  
She shook her head. "No." She spoke so softly it was almost not   
a word.   
  
"Then why are they here?" He didn't understand how a man could   
line up his muddy shoes neatly by the door and then walk away   
forever. How could there still be muddy shoes after a father had   
died? How could everything look just the same?   
  
"They bother you? You want me to get rid of them?" She seemed   
to dislike him just then.  
  
Fox nodded slowly. He did not want to make her angry. It was   
only that a man who was dead and in a box should not have his   
shoes waiting for him by the door. It was too sad to think   
they'd wait and wait and he'd never come home to wear them.  
  
"Fine." She got up and walked to the edge of the newspaper, but   
then she just stood there. Fox got the idea she was thinking   
about leaving the shoes there and sending him home instead.   
Finally she picked them up, newspaper and all, and tossed them in   
the closet. She shut the door as if there were a wild animal on   
the other side. "Is that better?"   
  
Fox was too upset to answer. He wished she would send him home.   
This house had a crushing feeling in it even worse than at the   
funeral. He gave in to his babyish desire and sucked the two   
middle fingers of his left hand.   
  
Mrs. Luce started to look less angry and more sad as she watched   
him comfort himself. "Is this about your daddy?" Her voice   
reminded him of the way a top jittered and shook just before it   
fell down. "Are you scared your daddy will go away and not come   
home?" Fox nodded.   
  
Light footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. Joey had given up   
playing alone in the back room and stood near the dining table,   
twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands. "Come here," Mrs.   
Luce said, holding her hands out to both children.   
  
She sat on the stairs and pulled them into her lap. "It was an   
accident. It was an accident with a little tiny boat out on the   
big water. Joey's daddy didn't mean to leave us. He made a   
mistake and took the little boat out farther than it could go. He   
didn't do it on purpose." Fox curled into the hollow of her   
shoulder and wondered why she kept saying that. It had never   
occurred to him that a parent would die on purpose and leave his   
child.   
  
Mrs. Luce rocked them. "What happened to Joey's daddy isn't going   
to happen to me, and it isn't going to happen to your mommy and   
daddy, Fox. We're going to be here for a long, long time, until   
you're all grown up and you don't need us so much anymore." It   
would have been easier to believe if she wasn't crying when she   
said it.   
  
Mulder's awareness returned to the present-day in sections. The   
sensation of his body hunched over the table came first. Mrs.   
Luce's voice, reedier than he remembered but still soothing,   
formed a bewildering bridge between the past and the present.   
  
"Fox, what is it? What's the matter?"  
  
At first he thought he was crying. Then he realized he wasn't --   
he was trying not to be sick. He sat with his eyes closed, his   
forehead resting on his balled fists. Sam Cooke was still   
warbling in the background: " . . . you thrill me, honest you do,   
honest you do." The flashback must have lasted only seconds.   
This was not one of the waking nightmares of PTSD -- those   
happened in real time. This was something electrochemical --   
something deep. He could almost hear the thin whine of Goldman's   
drill as he'd prepared to tunnel into Mulder's cerebral cortex,   
rooting for memories. He'd found some, all right. He turned his   
thoughts away from the vision of C.G.B. Spender pulling his   
mother close.  
  
Mulder knocked the chair over as he got up. "Sorry," he   
muttered. He walked into the kitchen and turned on the tap,   
rinsing the sick taste from his mouth with handful after cupped   
handful of water.   
  
Mrs. Luce's electric scooter buzzed as she came up behind him.   
"Are you all right? I don't understand what's happening. Should   
I call the hospital?"  
  
He shook his head. He knew he owed her some kind of explanation.   
Which one should he give her -- the holes in his head or the   
alien virus that was slowly re-writing the genetic code in his   
brain? No contest -- it was neither.   
  
Between rinsing and spitting he said: "'S a head injury -- old   
one. I'll be all right. Just gimme a minute."   
  
"For God's sake, Fox, are you seeing a doctor?"   
  
"Yeah." Since the beginning of March, actually. Oh, Scully's   
God would put a big, black mark in the book next to his name for   
that one.   
  
When he was finally done washing his mouth out, he soaked a dish   
towel in cold water, wrung it out and went to sit back down. He   
placed the towel on the back of his neck. "I'm sorry," he said.   
He was dimly aware that he'd been apologizing to her since the   
seizure hit him.   
  
"Don't be sorry. What can I do for you?" She positioned her   
scooter next to him and sponged his neck and forehead with the   
dishcloth.   
  
He interrupted her by shaking his head. "Just tell me . . . did   
she love us?"  
  
"Did who love you -- your mother?"   
  
He nodded.   
  
Mrs. Luce sat back as if to better read his expression. Mulder   
wondered what she saw there that seemed to concern her so much.   
"Of course she loved you. Of course. Why would you even ask   
that?"  
  
"She had this whole other life . . ."   
  
"A woman's life doesn't start when her children are born, you   
know," she said.  
  
"It's not that. There's this man, his name is C.G.B. Spender."   
Mulder hesitated to tell her the rest. It seemed especially   
wicked to impugn the character of a woman who was no longer alive   
to defend herself. He remembered how his mother had slapped him   
in her hurt and outrage. //"I am your mother and I will not stand   
here and listen to your accusations."//   
  
//I have to know,// Mulder thought, maybe making justifications   
to himself, maybe to the spirit of his mother. "I know Spender   
was around when I was young. I've seen pictures of him with my   
parents. He told me . . . he came right out and told me he's my   
father. He implied that he's Samantha's, too."  
  
Mrs. Luce rested the damp rag in her lap. There was horror in   
her expression, and compassion as well, but no shock, Mulder   
thought. Definitely not shock. Perhaps Churchill had looked so   
when Paris fell.   
  
"Bill Mulder was your father." She spoke firmly, as if reminding   
him of a duty he had forgotten. "He fed you. He clothed you.   
He saw that you got an education."  
  
"I'm not denying that. I'm not saying I'm not grateful. It's   
just -- what if it's true? Forget not knowing who my father was,   
I'd feel like I hardly knew who my mother was," Mulder said.  
  
She looked at him hard. "Bill Mulder was your father." Her   
words had a finality to them, like a door closing.  
  
That front was clearly futile, and Mulder turned away from it.   
"There's other things," he said. It was hard to talk while   
looking into that steady blue gaze, so he got up and wandered   
over to the door to the kitchen. The radio had started playing   
that damn Shirelles song: "While I'm far away from you my baby,   
I know it's hard for you my baby . . ." The last fucking thing he   
was in the mood for.   
  
"I think my mother knew what was going to happen to Samantha.   
Not that she could have stopped it, but she knew. And she never   
told me. She let me spend all those years looking." He kept his   
gaze on the little window over the sink. The orange berries of   
an ash tree growing outside were the only spot of color against   
the late winter landscape.  
  
He heard Mrs. Luce sigh. "The past is what you make it, Fox.   
Why make it terrible?"  
  
He spoke as if he hadn't heard. "The last thing she said to me   
was, 'There's so much I've left unsaid, for reasons I hope one   
day you'll understand.' Actually, she said it to my machine.   
She didn't even wait for me to get home . . ." His disordered   
mind offered up sensations: the smell of cold ashes, a leaky gas   
line making his eyes water. He remembered the picture frames   
lying around empty but not the tableau on the couch. //Please,   
God, don't let me have seen that . . .// He knew she'd used a   
plastic bag -- probably got that idea from "Final Exit." It was   
always bad when they used plastic. He remembered what had been   
left of Ed Paulsen when they finally caught up with him in that   
cabin outside Marquette -- and what wasn't left. Plastic was   
like a little greenhouse. //Dammit, Paulsen had been dead for   
weeks. This is different.// He had a dim mental image of the   
blue-and-white couch and felt sick. He'd probably seen. //Oh,   
Scully . . . why didn't you keep me out of there?//   
  
In tears, he turned to Mrs. Luce, hoping she'd distract him from   
what he couldn't remember seeing and never wanted to see again.   
"She'd -- she'd taken the pictures and things, you know? She   
burned 'em in the trash basket. I mean, why would she do that?   
Like . . . like s-she wanted to wipe out everything to do with   
her life, or maybe just about Samantha and me . . ."  
  
"Fox, slow down. I don't understand." Mrs. Luce held her hand   
out to him, the way she had when he was five and afraid of Mr.   
Luce's shoes.   
  
He walked by her and sat down. She rubbed his shoulder in little   
circles. When he felt calmer he continued, "My mother . . . she   
committed suicide, Mrs. Luce. She had cancer, but that's not how   
she wanted to die. I guess it was her right. Maybe I wouldv'e   
seen it her way in time, I don't know. But she never told me.   
She had the will and the papers all drawn up, she bought a   
goddamn grave plot and she never told me. I didn't figure into   
this carefully thought-out plan. I mean, we'd had some   
arguments; I accused her of some things. But I thought it was   
mostly okay between us. Now I don't know. Do you think . . . do   
you think she'd do this to hurt me? Because I sure have a hard   
time seeing it any other way."  
  
"I wish I knew what to tell you." Mrs. Luce took his hand in her   
free one, and Mulder noticed the brown burn marks on her fingers,   
as Joe had described. He covered her fingers with his own. "I   
just can't reconcile what you're telling me with what I knew of   
your mother. She cherished you . . . . I didn't know anyone   
who listened to her children the way your mother did. It   
wasn't in fashion at the time. She'd point out things and ask,   
'What is that, Fox? What do you think it does?' And she'd   
really listen to your explanation, whether it was right or  
not. I thought, 'That's really smart. She's teaching him to   
think.' It sounds so obvious now, but it wasn't then.   
  
"I suppose it sounds wrong to say you were in love, but mothers   
and children are in love, in a very innocent way. The two of you   
were obviously mad about each other."  
  
Mulder bent his head, remembering a time when he and his mother   
were in love, when she was the sunlight at the center of his   
little universe. Then something had gotten in the way, whether   
it was C.G.B. Spender or a multi-national abduction conspiracy or   
just the mismatch of personalities that sometimes happened   
between parents and children. But after a while Fox's questions   
and hypotheses stopped being cute and became threatening, and his   
mother didn't want to listen anymore. Maybe that was why he felt   
so cheated by her death. Some people were able to recapture the   
tenderness of their early years at the end of their parents'   
lives, when the care-taking roles were reversed. His mother had   
not been interested. Did she not trust him? Did she really not   
love him?  
  
Mulder looked up and said, "Mrs. Luce? Do your kids a favor and   
let them take care of you. Maybe you don't need it, but they   
do."   
  
She drew breath as though she meant to argue with him, but then   
her expression softened, as if something, maybe pity, had   
persuaded her to let the dispute go. He hoped it wasn't pity.   
  
Mulder's hair really wasn't long enough for her to brush it out  
of his eyes, but she made the gesture anyway. "I'll keep that   
in mind," she said.   
  
For a while he leaned with his chin in his hand, done crying,   
mostly, and just looked at her. The mushy 50's song on the radio   
made him feel like they were two teenagers in a soda shop: "Life   
can never be exactly like we want it to be. I can be satisfied   
just knowing that you love me . . ."   
  
On second thought, the goofy-teen feeling was different. He got   
that sometimes with Scully. He and Mrs. Luce were more like a   
mother and her four-year-old, almost-lovers for an afternoon.   
Silly. Well, maybe not so silly. Perhaps long acquaintance with   
this sensible, self-reliant lady had influenced his choice of a   
woman who could take out a flesh-regenerating mutant with a   
defibrillator. And Scully had done it in 4-inch heels, for God's   
sake -- the thought still gave him cheap thrills.   
  
He'd really been pretty fortunate in the women in his life;   
maybe letting go with grace was one way to show appreciation.   
"You remember telling me that you and my parents would still be   
around until Joey and I didn't need you so much anymore?" Mulder   
asked.  
  
She blinked at him. "I said that?"   
  
"So when exactly did you expect that to be?"   
  
"I . . . suppose I assumed that you wouldn't remember it by the   
time you were old enough to know what a lie that was."  
  
Mulder broke into a rare laugh. "That's what I thought." He   
began to feel, if not comforted, then at least a grief that was   
closer to love than abandonment.   
  
The Shirelles continued their mildly annoying lullaby: "Each   
night before you go to bed my baby, Whisper a little prayer for   
me my baby . . ."   
  
Maybe it was time to start tying up the loose ends of his   
mother's life. For instance, he hadn't gotten her a tombstone.   
He didn't know what date to put on it. Scully had written   
"February 6 or 7" on the death certificate. She was a   
conservative pathologist who refused to go out on a limb with   
time of death estimates, and in this instance her carefulness   
irked him.   
  
//Fine, I'll just put '2000.' Let 'em guess. 'Christina Mulder,   
1941 - 2000.' No, wait, she had 'Teena' on her license. Did she   
change it legally? I don't know. Hell.// Actually, he was   
pretty sure the name had originally been Krystina, sister of   
Katarin and Margrieta, who had quickly become Teena, Kathy and   
Margie for the same reason their mother gave up the Jewish   
religion in favor of a pale sort of Protestantism. Europe had   
not been good to their family.  
  
//So we've got the religion, the death date and the name all in   
doubt. Phenomenal.// What *did* he know about the woman he'd   
lived with for nearly eighteen years? Mrs. Luce said she'd   
cherished him.   
  
Maybe.   
  
While he brooded, the Shirelles song, insubstantial as a kiss,   
drew to its end: " . . . and tell all the stars above, This is   
dedicated to the one I love."  
  
It would have been funny, if only he hadn't started to cry.  
  
***** 


	10. resurgam10

Scully slept deeply in Tammy Williams' girlhood bed. She'd taken   
her Tylenol-3 before going to sleep, and the dopey, sluggish   
feeling insinuated itself into her dreams.   
  
She dreamt she was standing in Skinner's office, trying to   
present a complicated scientific argument about alien viruses   
while drunk. She slurred her speech and kept dropping her laser   
pointer so that it rolled under AD Kersh's chair. Worse, her   
extended family had dropped by and a crowd of them sat at the   
back of the room, looking horrified.   
  
Scully steadied herself by holding onto her AV cart and did her   
best to reconstruct a line of reasoning that had seemed so cogent   
the night before. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep,   
but there were reports to give, her reputation to preserve, if   
possible. She avoided her mother's eyes, with their look of   
scalding hurt.   
  
Aiming her laser pointer at the blurry slide image on Skinner's   
wall, she said, "So this . . . this right here, is analogous to   
human RNA, and it, you know, transcribes backwards into DNA, but   
with three base pairs instead of two." She looked up woozily and   
discovered that the slide did not show a strand of alien RNA, but   
instead an entire human chromosome. Mortified, she said, "Wait -  
- this is the wrong image. Hang on." She pushed the slide   
advance button but the carousel rotated backward. A picture of   
Bethesda Naval Hospital appeared on the wall.  
  
"Are you telling us an alien virus built *that?*" asked Nickerson   
from the Budget Department. The bureaucrats sitting around the   
conference table all chuckled. Skinner touched his fingertips to   
his forehead and looked pained.   
  
"No -- no, of course not. I've just got the wrong slide on the--  
" She tried turning the carousel by hand, but only managed to   
pop it off its stand and send it crashing to the floor. Scully   
grabbed for it and lost her laser pointer. The little metal   
cylinder bounced on the carpet and rolled. //Please don't let it   
stop at Kersh's feet . . .// It did.  
  
He scooped it from the carpet and held it out to her. "I believe   
this belongs to you, Agent Scully?" His voice was soft as a   
bullet clip sliding into place.  
  
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry . . . I'm a little disorganized." Her   
words were a slurred mess.   
  
"I can see that," Kersh said.   
  
Her baby nephew cheeped in the corner. Scully looked up at her   
parents, seated beneath Skinner's picture of the Attorney   
General. Her father wouldn't look at her. As she watched, he   
unclipped the orange visitor pass from the jacket of his Naval   
uniform and let it drop into his lap. Her mother held his arm,   
whether seeking to give or receive comfort Scully wasn't sure.   
Margaret Scully's look was like an accusation, but one filled   
with sorrow and pity that her daughter had come to this.   
  
Scully moaned and stirred under the covers, becoming dimly aware   
of the throbbing of her injured hands. Trying to wake herself   
was like dragging her body out of quicksand. At last she opened   
her eyes, dry and swollen from the dusty pillow. The room was in   
the half-shadow of late afternoon. Her sleepy gaze took in her   
jacket and gun, laid over a chair, the black canvas case   
containing her laptop that rested on top of the dresser. Symbols   
of authority and trustworthiness, assuring her that she was not   
the bumbling wretch of her dream. But even as she regained full   
consciousness, the bone-deep feeling of shame would not leave   
her.   
  
She examined the emotion like a wound. Where had it come from?   
Why did it feel so deep? Irv Stuckey's words came back to her:   
//"I know you tried and failed to get custody of a child who died   
in 1998."//  
  
No. She wasn't going to let him make that her fault. Emily had   
gotten the best mothering Scully was capable of, the best care   
medical science could offer. She sat up and felt the room wobble   
around her. The dust must have irritated her sinuses and caused   
drainage to back up into her ear canals. She rooted around in   
her purse, looking for the meclizine HCl she sometimes took for   
motion sickness. After several dizzy, nauseated seconds of   
frustration, she dumped the bag out on the floor. The Chapstick-  
shaped container of meclizine bounced out amid a hail of extra   
batteries, charge card receipts, and trial-size toiletry items.   
The little heap formed a sad sort of autobiography on the rug.   
Scully dry-swallowed a motion-sickness tablet and leaned back   
against the wall.  
  
Lord, she really did feel drunk -- bad drunk, up at 5 a.m. after   
a night of too-sweet wine drunk. A dirty, shameful feeling. She   
recalled that she'd contaminated the scene of Kristie's death   
last night while trying to aid two phantom children. No doubt   
the Troopers who'd searched the woods had some things to say   
about her today. Yet humiliating as that was, she'd been acting   
in good faith. Looking foolish was not a cause for true shame.   
  
This was something deeper, worse. She remembered Emily's case   
worker, Susan Chambliss, explaining the reason behind her custody   
recommendation. //"You're a single woman who's never been married   
or had a long-term relationship. You're in a high stress, time   
intensive, and dangerous occupation . . ."// Chambliss' smile   
had been compassionate, but the hard, distant look in her eyes   
suggested suspicion, both of Scully's motives and her abilities.   
Under that sweetly rejecting gaze, Scully saw herself as   
Chambliss must have seen her: a self-obsessed career woman who   
wanted to use a vulnerable little girl to fill some gaping   
emotional need of her own. Not quite a monster, but a threat.  
  
Inside, Scully was still protesting that it wasn't true. She had   
survived her own near-fatal illness and had become stronger for   
it. She'd had something to offer Emily that more "suitable"   
parents didn't -- empathy from personal experience. She'd   
willingly entered that dark tunnel again, relived the experience   
"through the eyes of a child," as Chambliss had put it, in order   
to give Emily everything she could.   
  
Some self-punishing inner voice whispered, //And look at how it   
ended -- a little white coffin in St. Mary's, full of sand.//  
  
Scully got up, nausea or no nausea. She'd be damned if she'd   
lie around and let Irv Stuckey's words go to work on her again.   
She'd cried most of the way to Edgartown, where she'd forced   
herself to calm down so she could shop for essentials like a   
normal person.   
  
She'd finally found an open pharmacy and "Oscar's Dry Goods   
Store," which was much less quaint than it sounded and   
outrageously expensive. Since it was just about the only open   
store in town, it could afford to be. One wall was largely   
devoted to the sort of items that campers might need at the last   
minute, and Scully had picked out a pair of khaki fishing pants   
and a navy polo shirt with an embroidered lighthouse and the   
words, "Edgartown, MA" on the left breast. The outfit was too   
expensive and would make her feel like a tour guide, but it would   
have to do.   
  
She pulled her new clothes out of their plastic bag and set   
herself to clipping tags and getting dressed. The pant legs were   
too long and she had to roll them up. Terrific. The teenage   
camp counselor look. Well, maybe Mulder would get off on it --   
you never knew.   
  
He claimed to find her sexy when she woke up in the morning,   
despite the fact her hair was usually wild as a burning bush   
and she tended to sit half-conscious among the tangled sheets   
for a while, blinking in the lamplight like a lost subterranean  
creature. She had no idea what he saw in her then. Certainly   
not something out of "Some Girls Do: Part III."   
  
She slid her feet into her blood-spattered orthopedic sneakers   
without having much of an idea where she was going. Out. Away   
from the cops who probably thought she was nuts and the Islanders   
who knew too much about Mulder, and about her by association.   
  
She attached her holster to the elastic waistband of her pants   
and thought about how Mulder must have felt in the days when this   
house was his refuge from public opinion. The poor kid   
practically couldn't leave his front porch without running into   
people who knew everything there was to know about him, or who   
thought they did, anyway. Talk about a way to raise a paranoid.   
  
That idea led back to Irv's accusation about the cat, and then   
once again to Emily. //He's a hateful little man. He has an   
evil mind, and most of what he says isn't true.// But some of it   
was true. Even Irv's lies were maybe just a little bit true.   
Just enough to hurt.  
  
Scully threw her coat on. Her cell phone had dropped out of her   
pocket and lay on the rug under the chair. She looked at it and   
hesitated. Mulder was worried about her, and the two of them had   
been out of contact for hours. Actually, she'd had the phone   
turned off for much of the day. She told herself she ought to   
call him, or at least take the phone with her.   
  
Ought to, but wouldn't. Scully wanted to be alone, without   
having to answer questions, without having to grit her teeth and   
listen to advice. At this point, even, "How did your day go?"   
would make her want to scream. She left the phone where it was,   
hoping he'd understand. After all, he knew what it was like to   
ache inside and to have other people's eyes following him, just   
watching and knowing.   
  
By the front door she ran into Davis and Tihkoosue -- almost   
literally. Tihkoosue pushed the door in just as she was reaching   
for the knob. "Uh -- sorry, Dr. Scully," he said, his dark eyes   
widening in surprise. He glanced down at her hands with their   
bandages of clean white gauze. "How are you doing?"  
  
Scully stepped back to allow him and Davis into the room. "I'm   
fine, thank you," she said, giving him a smile she hoped was   
briskly professional. From the expression on his face, she   
gathered she looked ghastly. "I wanted to tell you, I appreciate   
the work you and your men did last night." Better to bring the   
fiasco of the search up first. Tap dancing around the subject   
would only be worse.   
  
"Sure -- no problem," Tihkoosue said. "I just wish we'd been   
able to be more, you know, productive."   
  
He didn't say what would have been more productive, like   
sharpening pencils or alphabetizing his cereal cupboard, but the   
conversation ground to a miserable halt. Davis broke the silence   
by saying, "We had a break in the case today. Your partner may   
have helped us catch our man."  
  
"He did?" Scully asked.   
  
Davis looked like a batter who'd expected a fastball and got   
pitched a turnip.  
  
"I mean -- he did. That's good," Scully said.  
  
It was too late. The detective's expression had shifted to the   
almost-neutral look of veiled speculation. "That surprises you?"   
he asked. She wondered if he'd start an office pool betting on   
when the nice young men in the clean white coats would finally   
come to get her.   
  
A hot, prickling feeling spread over her face and neck. "No.   
Mulder's very good at what he does. It's just --" It was just   
that she'd so given herself over to the idea that Kristie's   
ordeal, like her own, had been at the hands of something more   
than human. "It's just that was fast, that's all. Even for   
him."   
  
"Oh," Davis said. She figured he'd put his money on two weeks or   
less.  
  
Tihkoosue cleared his throat and said, "So, uh, you're not going   
out again, are you, doctor?"   
  
They thought she was too big a dimwit to be allowed out alone.   
Scully tried to get mad instead of feeling embarrassed. There   
was dignity in anger. She gave them a chilly smile and said,   
"I'm sure you have work to do. Don't let me keep you." Her tone   
was curt enough, but she was pretty sure every blood vessel in   
her face was telegraphing how ridiculous she felt.   
  
She put her hand to her head as she walked out onto the snow-  
dusted porch. Tihkoosue's voice was still audible as she   
descended the steps. "What was all that about?" he asked.  
  
"I dunno," Davis answered. "At first I thought *he* was nuts,   
and then--" His words were muffled as he pulled the door shut.   
  
Scully headed for the field behind the house and the woods   
beyond, where there would be no people, no questions, no curious   
eyes. As she tromped over the frozen grass, she passed garden   
furnishings she'd missed the night before: bare rose trellises; a   
bench-swing; a low, thorny thicket that was probably a descendant   
of the raspberry bushes Mulder had gotten into as a child.   
  
If Leigh's version of events was truer than Irv's, Mulder's   
childhood had been fairly happy until his family all but   
disintegrated when he was twelve. By then he'd have been old   
enough to understand the extent of his loss, but too young to   
have any power to change things. She told herself she pitied   
him.   
  
But as she left the garden for the wide-open field, she began to   
realize that pity was not what she was feeling at all. Out under   
the inverted blue bowl of a winter sky, no ready help within   
shouting distance, she was envious of Fox Mulder. She envied him   
the space he'd always had around him -- physical space to   
explore, his adventurous spirit unhindered by his would-be   
protectors, and the emotional space he'd succeeded in setting up   
between himself and the expectations of others. If Mulder wanted   
to spend Christmas Day getting drunk and watching Three Stooges   
movies, no one was going to stop him. She was sure he never,   
ever had nightmares about being embarrassed in front of his boss.   
  
By contrast, Scully's sense of self had been formed by a trinity   
of great institutions: her family, the Catholic Church, and the   
U.S. Navy. She was still half-convinced they owned proprietary   
rights to her self-respect, and if she ever broke ranks she would   
become someone awful. Actually, upon occasion she really had   
become someone awful, as when she'd spent more than a year trying   
to live down to Daniel Waterston's expectations. It was   
difficult -- the emotional equivalent of foot-binding -- but   
she'd almost succeeded. Most of her love affairs had been like   
that, like spending so many months wearing too-tight shoes,   
hoping she'd shrink into them. Really, she only felt whole and   
sane when she was alone.   
  
She met no one as she followed the shallow trough of a bike path   
that skirted the edge of the woods. Leigh had told her it was   
the longer, less difficult way to reach the little graveyard   
Mulder had found her in last night. In her current mood, the   
isolation of the clearing with its leaning headstones was what   
she wanted.   
  
She nearly passed the graveyard before she noticed it. The crime   
scene tape had been taken down, depriving her of a landmark.   
What caught her eye was the tallest of the headstones, a flat,   
narrow rectangle of slate that leaned sideways as if the earth   
had partially swallowed it. Once she knew where to look, the   
other headstones, mostly broken, became distinguishable from the   
weeds and juniper canes around them.   
  
Last night's snow had obliterated all signs of the officers who'd   
tracked back and forth between the crime scene and the road. If   
she hadn't known better, she'd have assumed she was the first   
visitor in a hundred years. As she walked over to the tall   
headstone, the only sounds were her feet crunching the ice-coated   
snow and the soft "pee-whit" of a nuthatch.  
  
Snow covered the top of the stone and adhered to its face, but   
Scully resisted the temptation to brush it off. Somehow, the   
idea of imposing her sense of order on the place felt   
disrespectful. She crouched down and found the worn inscription   
was still readable. Across the top the name "Cartwright" was   
carved in heavy block letters. An entire family was listed   
below, both with and without dates: Ezra, 1785; Wife, 1797;   
Thomas; John, 1772; Serena, 1774; Mary, 1780; and an eroded word   
at the bottom that might simply have been "child."   
  
How degrading, she thought, to spend eternity labeled simply as   
"Wife," -- or "child," for that matter. Worse, Mrs. Cartwright   
had survived her husband by twelve years. Had Ezra and his   
children waited that long for a tombstone, or was it carved   
sometime beforehand, already bearing the word "Wife" and lacking   
only a date? How had Mrs. Cartwright felt while looking at her   
one-word epitaph, knowing that her identity would melt away with   
her flesh? Poor "child" had neither a name nor a date. The   
thought of that little spirit enduring centuries of well-meaning   
prayers essentially addressed to "occupant" was dismally lonely.   
  
Scully remembered the gray-eyed child from the night before, her   
hair tangled, her clothes soaked in blood. //"Stay,"// she'd   
said. And Scully had wanted to stay. After all, they had so   
much in common. One was exiled to the world of anonymous souls   
by fate, the other by choice.   
  
Susan Chambliss' words came back to her: //"You're a single woman   
who's never been married or had a long-term relationship . . ."//   
Scully bent and pressed her fingertips into the snow, seeking the   
shock of ice crystals against her skin, an assurance she was   
still part of this world.   
  
//Emily . . .// Scully had pushed away the people who wanted to   
love her, choosing to seek independence and the illusion of self-  
sufficiency instead. And when she'd finally met someone she   
was willing to give up that freedom for, she'd been found   
unworthy. What if she *had* loved Emily in a self-serving,   
shortsighted way? Chambliss had called her medical decisions   
into question. Perhaps she'd pursued treatment too aggressively,   
or not aggressively enough.   
  
Scully shied from her worst fear as from meeting a corpse in the   
dark, but now it confronted her. What if she'd made some weak,   
selfish decision that caused Emily to die?   
  
//"It's always a wild night in winter, and some say you can hear   
the voices of those dead babies crying in the wind,"// Irv had   
said.  
  
The iodine smell of the San Diego PICU came back to her. In her   
mind, she heard the rushing sound of the self-contained air   
recirculation system that kept the quarantine area under negative   
pressure. Emily lay in the room's only bed, a child unconscious   
and bathed in sweat, but solid and warm and real.   
  
Now, gone.  
  
Scully repeated the words she'd whispered behind her paper mask,   
"I'm so sorry."   
  
//"I know you tried and failed to get custody of a child who died   
in 1998. . . . "//  
  
The feel of Emily's cheek beneath her fingers, so soft, but hot   
as an oven door, was the most real thing she could recall. It   
felt more real than this snow-covered graveyard, more real than   
the weight of her body pressing down upon the balls of her feet.   
"Forgive me, Emily."   
  
//"Last night when you were out ruining your real clothes, did   
you hear her calling you?"//  
  
The shame of her nightmare pierced her. It was as if Susan   
Chambliss' unspoken accusation had been transformed into a   
scarlet letter and sewn onto Scully's clothing. The letter would   
be "M" for murderer. God knew she'd never meant to hurt her   
little daughter, biological, adopted, or both. She'd never meant   
to hurt her parents by being difficult and distant. Her   
decisions had all seemed inevitable at the time. Maybe that was   
every damned soul's excuse as it stood trembling before the gates   
of Hell.   
  
In a voice hoarse from tears and fatigue, she prayed, "Lord Jesus   
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus   
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner . . ."   
  
She resisted the urge to move, to find somewhere less grim in   
which to pray. Everything considered, it felt only fitting that   
she seek solace in the same environment she'd chosen to spend her   
career in: alone among the dead.  
  
***** 


	11. resurgam11

As Mulder scraped his shoes off on Nye House's coconut fiber mat,   
all he wanted to do was take a shower and go to sleep beside   
Scully, preferably after making gentle, tender love. No Stupid   
Spice Channel Tricks tonight. In fact, he might be willing to   
settle for watching old movies on TV and falling asleep with his   
head in her lap.   
  
When he opened the door he found a few State Troopers standing   
near the front desk, talking in lowered voices. Their   
conversation stopped the moment he entered the room. Mulder   
ignored them and walked down the hall marked, "Employees Only   
Beyond This Point." Tammy Williams' old room was the first one   
on the left.   
  
There was no answer at his knock, and when he opened the door, he   
saw that Scully's coat was gone, but her cell phone lay beneath a   
chair. A closer inspection revealed that she'd left her purse   
but taken her gun. "Your partner's gone out," one of the   
officers called. Mulder didn't like the strange emphasis the man   
put on "out."   
  
He had a pretty good idea where she'd gone. //Scully, don't do   
this to me.// In the last 24 hours, he'd slept less and cried   
more than was good for his sanity. The last thing he needed was   
to be chasing her over the empty hills with who-knew-what loose   
in the woods.   
  
The men in the front room gave him curious looks as he wearily   
headed back out the way he came. As he'd feared, his car was   
parked in the gravel lot, its hood cold. A line of footprints in   
the snow led from the Inn's front door toward the field behind   
Nye House. They were wavy-soled orthopedic sneaker prints --   
Scully's autopsy shoes.   
  
Mulder walked across the frozen field thinking -- what? That   
when he found her, he'd grab her by the shoulders and shake her   
until her teeth rattled? He'd send her to her room with no TV?   
Sure. She'd shoot him first.  
  
Mulder's anger slowly drained away as he hiked across the frozen   
field, leaving nothing but cold fear in its place. Scully was   
practically all he had, and he was afraid he wouldn't survive   
losing her.   
  
He found her crouching in front of the old Cartwright tombstone   
in the South Road Burying Ground, her head bent, whispering to   
herself. He was able to catch the sibilants in "Jesus" and   
"sinner."   
  
"Hi," he said.   
  
She jumped a little at the sound of his voice. Scully brushed   
her cheeks with her fingertips before she turned to face him.   
"Hi."   
  
He walked over and crouched down next to her. Gesturing at the   
tombstone, he said, "Ezra doesn't say much, but he's all right."  
  
She dug in her pockets, presumably for a Kleenex. "I just needed   
some time alone."   
  
Mulder nodded, but didn't take the hint to go away. He didn't   
think she needed to be alone out here, with her own and Kristie's   
blood spattering the trees not fifty yards away. When her search   
for a tissue was unsuccessful, he gave her his clean   
handkerchief. The one he'd dried his own tears with was in his   
back pocket. "I used to come out here when I was a kid. Joey   
and I had a tree fort over in that willow." He pointed to a   
massive gray willow tree, now more dead than alive, which still   
had the remains of boards and some raveling ropes fastened to it.   
  
"Must've been nice," she said. She blew her nose and folded the   
handkerchief neatly. Mulder knew Scully's childhood had spanned   
seven states, and that if she and her siblings had built forts,   
she no longer knew where.   
  
"We had a good time," Mulder said. He didn't bother asking how   
she was doing, since he knew the answer would only be "Fine." He   
rubbed her back with his hand.   
  
"Mulder?"  
  
"Mmm-hm?"  
  
"Did you ever poison a cat?"  
  
He looked over at her, saw the earnestness in her mascara-smudged   
eyes. "What?"   
  
"I talked to Irv Stuckey today, and he said I should ask you   
about the time you poisoned the cat. He said that was what sent   
Sheriff Luce 'sniffing' after you."  
  
"Irv said . . . ? Irv's an asshole," Mulder said. After a   
moment he stood and walked a few steps away, fighting a powerful   
desire to go out to Menemsha and wring Irv's neck. "I never   
killed anybody's cat." He'd meant the statement to be a firm   
denial, but to his dismay he sounded hurt and resentful, like an   
eleven-year-old wrongfully accused.   
  
He heard the snow crunch beneath her feet as she stood and came   
over to him. Scully threaded her arm through his and rested her   
head against his bicep. "What happened?"   
  
He looked over at the broken tombstones, like jagged teeth   
sticking out of the ground. This was not a story he much liked   
telling. "Ah . . . hell. I was rotten kid. I knew I'd be in   
trouble if I hit my sister, so I mentally abused her instead.   
Sometimes when I got mad at her I said I'd do things . . .   
to her dolls or to her cat. Never poison -- it was Baroque   
things, 'The Pit and the Pendulum' stuff. It made her scream.   
I guess that's what I wanted." He felt Scully's body tense   
against him, and he looked over, asking a wordless question.   
  
She shook her head against his arm. "It's nothing. It's just I   
had a rabbit once. I called him Peter. As in Cottontail. A   
stupid name, but I was six. My brother kept threatening to skin   
and cook him."  
  
Mulder nodded, avoiding her eyes. "Maybe your brother feels kind   
of bad about it now."  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"Kids say things, you know?"   
  
"Yes."   
  
"My sister's cat turned up dead at the bottom of the basement   
stairs one day."  
  
Scully ran her bandaged hand up and down his forearm. "That   
must've been awful."  
  
"The cat had blood running out of her mouth. She was an indoor   
cat and this was in March -- nothing outside to chew on,   
poisonous or not. Samantha ran upstairs crying and told our mom   
the stuff I'd been saying. Mom just lost it. She took my dad's   
belt to me -- the worst whipping I ever got from her. Didn't   
matter that I said I hadn't done anything. I think she wanted to   
believe that I poisoned the cat, because it was better than the   
alternative."  
  
For a moment, the chilly afternoon was so quiet. There were no   
car noises this far out, not even the distant roar of airplane   
engines. The only sounds were the wind and the calls of the   
birds. Scully kept rubbing his arm. "Someone came in and did   
it," she said.   
  
"Yeah." The word was almost a sigh. "This was early in the year   
we lost my sister. I think my father was fighting the Syndicate   
at the time, so they sent him a little message. 'Hand over one of   
your kids for our Project, or next time it'll be more than just   
the cat.'"  
  
"That's horrible."  
  
"I couldn't convince my mom I hadn't done it. Before long I even   
had my sister believing me, which is saying something. I guess   
your sister always knows if you're lying or not."   
  
Scully's sharp intake of breath was somewhere between a laugh and   
a gasp of pain. He figured her bruised ribs were hurting her.   
"Melissa and I sounded exactly the same way when we lied. I   
always knew."  
  
"Well, Samantha knew. She was--" He decided not to describe   
that scene, himself lying across his bed, in more pain than he'd   
known existed, begging his mother for mercy while she blistered   
his behind and told him he'd done something very, very wicked.   
Samantha had stood on the other side of the bedroom door and   
shouted, "Don't you hit my brother!"   
  
"Anyway . . . she knew," Mulder said.   
  
He felt Scully shifting position as she looked up at him, but he   
kept his own gaze on a stand of black trees in the middle   
distance. Almost three decades later, he was still ashamed. Not   
so much because he'd been punished, but because his own mother   
thought him capable of doing such a thing. Knowing what he did   
now about the sort of children who tortured animals, the   
accusation was actually worse.   
  
"Did your mom ever believe you?" Scully asked.  
  
"Eventually. It helped that my dad believed me, or at least he   
believed my sister. Or maybe he knew something we didn't. I   
don't know." One of the braver things he'd done as a child was   
to stand in his pajamas in the middle of the living room, risking   
another spanking by simply being out of his room, and insist to   
his father that he hadn't killed the family cat. Bill Mulder had   
looked a little gray around the lips as he'd stood in his damp   
raincoat, confronted by the whole family yelling at him. He'd   
turned Fox around and sent him back upstairs with a surprisingly   
gentle nudge. //"Go on up, son. I'll talk to you later."//  
  
"Cats do sometimes just die, you know," Scully said.  
  
"You'd think that would have occurred to someone. It sure didn't   
seem to occur to my parents, at least not as the most likely   
possibility. There was something wrong, Scully. Something they   
weren't going to tell me about. They actually had the cat   
autopsied. I mean, how weird is that?"  
  
"When it's an animal, the procedure's usually called a necropsy,   
but it's not so unusual," Scully said.  
  
"There was blood inside of her. Or something. My parents   
weren't very forthcoming with information. The vet said she'd   
definitely eaten something poisonous, but he couldn't say what."  
  
"No. Isolating a toxin is hard enough now, and with the methods   
they had back in the early 70's it would have been worse.   
Probably even the FBI lab couldn't have identified the poison   
precisely. If whatever the cat ingested had cleared her stomach,   
there was really no way for the vet to know."  
  
Scully's tone was kinder than her clinical words implied. He   
turned toward her and rested his cheek against the smooth curve   
of her bangs. "Once my mom was sure I hadn't killed the cat, she   
wouldn't let my sister and I eat anywhere. We had to come home   
from school for lunch. She'd taste our food before she gave it   
to us, that sort of thing. I think this may have been when the   
neighbors first realized that something was really wrong with us.   
It was about that time when Joey's uncle started telling Mrs.   
Luce that maybe her kids shouldn't play with us anymore. I   
actually think he kind of liked me when I was little, it's just   
he could sense something really bad was coming down and didn't   
want his family involved. I guess I can't blame him."  
  
"As a law officer, it was his job to help you," Scully said.   
"You wouldn't turn away from a family in a desperate situation   
like that, would you?"   
  
"No." Mulder mouthed the word more than he spoke it. "But I   
don't have kids to protect, you know? If it was between a   
neighbor family and my own niece and nephew . . . I don't know.   
Anyway, people remembered what happened to the cat when my sister   
went missing. I was the only other person home when it happened,   
and they figured I was already a pet-poisoning junior psycho."  
  
"You weren't," she said firmly. "I hope your mother apologized   
to you."  
  
"She did, in her way." She'd cupped his face in her hands, a   
gesture somewhere between a caress and a restraint to keep him   
from looking away. //"Fox, if you didn't do this thing, I'm   
sorry."// She'd scanned his eyes, probably both hoping and   
fearing to find innocence.   
  
//"I didn't, Mom. I swear I didn't."// He'd been crying as he   
said it, afraid this would only make him seem guiltier. *"If*   
you didn't," she'd said.   
  
"Did she comfort you?"  
  
He nodded, rubbing his cheek against Scully's hair. "She let me   
curl up in her lap while we watched some stupid nature show."   
Actually he'd lain with his head and shoulders in his mother's   
lap while his drawn-up knees sweated against the plastic-covered   
couch.   
  
Scully sometimes held him like this, because their size   
differential and the conventions of the sexes prevented him from   
sitting in her lap. As a child, the reason had been quite   
different. Fox had a seam of blisters where his buttocks met his   
thighs, and another cluster on his left hip, where the belt had   
snapped around. Sitting in anyone's lap was quite beyond him.   
  
His mother had stroked his hair while they watched a bear stalk   
an otter community in too-vivid 70's Technicolor. Samantha would   
normally have seized the chance to bump her big brother aside so   
she could assert her baby-of-the-family right to snuggle with   
Mom, but she climbed into their father's lap instead. She'd   
understood that Fox and his mother needed a chance to make up   
with one another. Bill read a newspaper around the little girl.   
  
Hurting, sleepy from crying even though his bedtime was an hour   
away, Fox turned toward his mother and twisted the ends of her   
long, dark hair in his fingers. The nature show announcer boomed   
behind him: //"Olivia nips and claws her kits away from the   
bear's snapping teeth."//   
  
The conversation Fox hadn't had with his mother that night   
remained one of the most powerful moments in their relationship.   
She'd rubbed his back through the terrycloth of his bathrobe and   
hadn't said: I'm so sorry I hurt you. I would have forgiven you   
even if you had poisoned the cat. I'm desperate to protect you   
and I don't know how.   
  
He'd looked up into her green eyes, big as a child's in her   
pretty face, and hadn't said: I forgive you because I know that   
you're scared. Actually, I'd forgive you anything.   
  
"What're you thinking about?" Scully asked. She slipped her hand   
beneath the folds of his coat and rested it in the small of his   
back, two of her fingers pressing against the waistband of his   
trousers. She'd been taking tease lessons from him, wicked   
thing.   
  
"Nothing. A long time ago," he said. Better to turn the   
conversation back to her. "What're you thinking about?"  
  
"Nothing. The last days. Religion."   
  
The hand almost over his ass said otherwise. He wondered if he   
were a magnet for people who sent mixed messages. Between his   
relatives, lovers, ex-lovers, co-workers, and shadowy informants,   
the mind games got a little excessive.   
  
"That tombstone says, 'Resurgam,' or, 'I will rise again,'" she   
said, pointing the toe of her sneaker at one of the broken   
headstones. Actually only part of the "s" and the "urgam" were   
left.   
  
Mulder, who tended to look at all things on the Vineyard with the   
eyes of childhood, had always had a vague assumption that   
"Surgam" was some kind of family name. The Oxford grad in him   
was disgusted.   
  
Feeling a little too vulnerable to confess his ignorance, he   
said, "That guy's pretty confident for someone with a big rock   
over his head."   
  
"It's ironic, isn't it? The first headstones were weights to   
keep the dead from walking, and now we carve messages about the   
Resurrection into them."  
  
//I love you, I hate you, come here, go away . . . story of my   
life.// "Those rocks right there are probably headstones too,"   
Mulder said, pointing at two granite mounds beneath soft caps of   
snow.   
  
"Wow. They didn't even rate a slate slab. I can see the TV   
special right now: 'It's your headstone, Charlie Brown.' 'I got   
a rock.'"  
  
Mulder had a twisted mental image of the Grim Reaper handing out   
all the good tombstones before Charlie Brown got to the front of   
the line. "You're sick," he told her. "I knew I liked something   
about you." He kissed the top of her head. "This used to be a   
family graveyard. Those rocks are probably covering poor   
relatives, servants, kids, maybe."   
  
She made a small, disgusted noise in her throat.   
  
"The 18th century didn't have the same ideas about kids that we   
do."  
  
"I know."   
  
Mulder considered asking her whether she wanted to talk about   
what she'd seen last night, but there was something closed and   
self-protective about her. At every chance she could, she'd   
turned their conversation back to him.   
  
"C'mere. I want to show you something," he said. He took her   
hand and led her toward the ruined foundations that lay a little   
to the east of the graveyard, not far from where he'd found her   
last night. The structure had fallen down so long ago that a   
maple with a trunk the diameter of a woman's forearm grew inside   
what had once been solid walls. At the moment, snow covered even   
the crumbling fieldstone wall base, but the building's outlines   
were hinted at by straight, contiguous gaps in the weeds and   
other vegetation. The effect was a little eerie, as if the   
memory of the house had so impressed itself upon nature that even   
the grasses still respected boundaries that had long since ceased   
to exist.   
  
Mulder kicked at the approximate location of the wall base until   
the tip of his shoe struck rock. He bent and cleared the half-  
frozen mud and clotted leaves away until he exposed a low, flat   
chunk of Massachusetts brownstone.   
  
"There," he said with satisfaction. "This was a house, a   
farmhouse from back before the Revolutionary War. It belonged to   
the family buried back over there. Actually, the cemetery used   
to be named after them before people forgot who they were and   
South Road became the major landmark. On really old maps it's   
called the 'Brown-Cartwright Grave Yard.' If you're curious   
about it, you can visit the Dukes County Historical Society.   
Lots of the little old ladies around here are grave-hunters.   
You'd be surprised."  
  
Scully looked around wide-eyed, as if the place frightened her.   
"What happened to the people who lived here?" she asked.  
  
"I think the house burned in about 1790-something. I'm not sure   
about the family, but I can tell you there are still plenty of   
Browns and Cartwrights on the Vineyard," Mulder said. He dug in   
the cold dirt along the wall line until his fingertips touched   
something hard and rough. When he tugged it out and brushed the   
mud off, he found it was a jumble of rusted metal. "Sometimes   
you find spoons out here, or old nails, or -- here's a nail here.   
You can tell it's original to the house because the head is just   
a kind of hammered-down section. It looks like a miniature   
railroad spike." He plucked the little chunk of twisted iron   
from the mass and held it out to Scully. "See how the sharp end   
just kind of withers away? That's because it was burned.   
Occasionally you find lumps of melted glass out here, too."   
  
She stretched her fingertips toward the object but then pulled   
away, as if it were still hot. She looked up at him and asked,   
"Where did Irv's story come from? I mean the South Road Ghost   
story."   
  
He sprinkled the twists of rusted iron back onto the ground and   
wiped his fingers on the hem of his coat.   
  
"The truth?" he asked. "There's a book in the county library   
called 'Haunted Martha's Vineyard.' Every Island child I knew   
checked that book out at some time or another, usually around   
Halloween. That's where I got it from. That's probably where   
Irv got it from. As far as I know, there's no other record that   
the South Road Ghost ever existed."  
  
"So what did I see, Mulder? There were little children dying --   
they were there and then not there. You think I made the whole   
thing up?" Scully asked.  
  
"No. I don't think you made it up. I think you saw something,   
probably even something paranormal. All I'm saying is that this   
being may not be what it first appears. I'll be honest -- I'm   
suspicious of a good story, where everything is explained and   
everything makes sense. Real life just isn't like that. So when   
someone tells me that this awful mom kills her kids and then   
she's doomed to walk the night inflicting vengeance on wayward   
women, it's a just little too neat. It sounds like somebody's   
idea of poetic justice, exactly the kind of thing that people   
would invent.   
  
"Scully, if there is something out here . . . calling you, it may   
be choosing to present itself as part of a good story. I mean,   
what attracts us more than the idea that the world makes sense?   
Because if we can understand the world, we can control it, and   
then we never have to get hurt again. Right?"  
  
She looked away toward some point on the horizon. "You don't   
understand," she said.  
  
"Then explain it to me." She didn't reply. "Explain it so I can   
help you," he urged.  
  
"Mulder," her voice was infinitely weary, as if she'd crossed a   
great distance to speak with him. "This is just one of those   
things that isn't about you."  
  
"If it's about you, it's about me."   
  
That was clearly the wrong thing to say. Scully actually seemed   
to flinch.   
  
"Don't shut me out," he pleaded. He felt about eleven years old,   
tormented unjustly, and yet desperate to be comforted by his   
tormentor. Why did he most need the people he loved right after   
they'd hurt him?   
  
"It's okay," she said. Her eyes remained distant but she held   
out her hand. He took it in both of his own. "It's okay.   
Things haven't changed between us. This isn't about you. It's   
about me."  
  
"You realize that's the second-biggest lie in the world after   
'the check is in the mail?'"  
  
She pulled him close and held him. "I'm not going anywhere."  
  
"If I lost you, I just -- I wouldn't deal with it well." He   
hugged her so tightly he could feel the bones of her shoulder   
blades pressing his forearm.   
  
He felt more than heard her gasp of pain. "Mulder, don't."  
  
Too late, he remembered her bruised ribcage and released her.  
  
She pulled back from him. Twilight came to the woods first, and   
in the dimness her pupils were very wide. The shadows made her   
eyes seem infinitely deep, like black water locked beneath black   
ice. What lay in that darkness was apparently not for him to   
know. She placed two cool fingertips over his lips. "Just   
don't."  
  
He looked away first. "Sure."  
  
She slipped her arm through his. "Come on. It's cold, let's go   
back."   
  
He walked with her, guiding her steps along the quickest path   
back to the Inn. They cast long shadows away to their right as   
they crossed the snowy field. Lights had already appeared in   
some of Nye House's windows.   
  
"Mulder, can I ask you something?" she asked.  
  
He glanced down at her, grateful to be distracted from the dread   
that had begun to dog him. "What is it?"   
  
"Do you have a juvenile record in Connecticut?"  
  
At first her question confused him. "Do I have a what?"  
  
"Irv told me to ask you about Fairfield County Juvenile Court   
sometime," Scully asked.  
  
Mulder had a mental flash of himself at 15, staring at his too-  
shiny wingtips and listening to a judge talk to his father. "You   
know, I hate Irv. Did he tell you how many books I never   
returned to the library, too? Somewhere I have one from 1987."  
  
"No. Well, he asked whether you were into enemas and plastic   
pants," she said.  
  
"That figures. I hope you told him 'Yes.'"  
  
She looked appalled. "Of course I didn't. I didn't think his   
question was even worth answering."  
  
"By getting upset you just confirmed the idea in his mind. You   
should have told him, yeah, I'm into plastic pants, and peanut   
butter and farm animals, and looking at posters of Freddy Mercury   
while I engage in autoerotic electric shock with the toaster.   
Then he wouldn't know what to believe."  
  
"Sorry. I guess I'm not as up on my perversions as I should be,"   
she said.  
  
"Stick with me, kid. I'll teach you everything there is to   
know." He thought she tried to repress a smile. "You already   
know the Juvenile Court story," he said.  
  
She shook her head. "No I don't."  
  
"Yes, you do. You just didn't recognize it because Irv tried to   
make it sound worse. Remember the third case we worked together   
-- maybe the fourth, when we were in Idaho staking out the guy   
who could telekinetically turn his microwave into a MAZER?"  
  
"Oh . . ." He saw the glimmer of recollection in her eyes.   
  
The over-humid car with its persistent fried-food smell was   
permanently etched into his memory, as was the white curve of   
Scully's chin and throat, fuller then than it was now, backlit by   
halogen streetlights. "You asked me if I thought I was capable   
of killing someone, and I said yes, because I'd been ready to   
kill Eric Magnus in the 10th grade."  
  
"That's the kid you went after with -- what, a roll of dimes?"  
  
"It was quarters." Eric had been the first one to wrap his fist   
around a roll of currency in order to harden the impact of his   
punch, but Fox had learned fast. "He was the 'Chester the   
Molester' kid," Mulder said. The older boy discovered early   
in Mulder's Greenwich High career that if he wanted to pick a   
fight with the weirdo Vineyard kid, all he had to do was whisper,   
"Who got your sister, Freak? It was Chester the Molester."  
  
"You didn't say they arrested you for that," she said.  
  
"Yes, I did. Remember me and Eric got into it on the street   
behind the school, and then somebody called the cops? When   
the officer asked, 'What's going on here?' Eric said, 'Nothing,'   
and I said, 'I'm going to kill this motherfucker.'"   
  
"Oh, that's right . . . . I forgot you have that Eagle Scout   
quality -- always honest," she said. She pulled her arm loose   
and slipped it beneath his coat, tucking her fingertips into the   
top of his back pocket. A good reason never to keep it buttoned,   
he thought. He put his arm around her waist, and as they walked   
he could feel the muscles of her hip working.  
  
"So after that they brought me in. From their perspective, who   
started it wasn't important. I was the one who threatened to   
kill someone.   
  
"Back then, every case with an underage defendant went to   
Juvenile Court. I felt pretty lousy standing there in front of   
the judge, even though he spent most of his time telling off my   
parents."   
  
Mulder could still hear the gravelly voice of the Honorable Peter   
Shamsideen saying, //"Mr. and Mrs. Mulder, I am very sorry for   
the loss of your daughter. But you must remember that you have a   
son who needs you."// Fox had kept his hands jammed in his   
pockets, even though he'd been told not to do that, and had been   
very close to crying, even though he'd been told not to do that   
either. When Judge Shamsideen said, //"Young man, I hope you   
succeed in making something of your life,"// Fox had only managed   
a soft, //"Yessir."// Mulder wasn't sure if being senior agent   
on the X-Files Unit would count as a success in Judge   
Shamsideen's opinion or not.   
  
"My sentence was therapy and community service -- the therapy   
really *was* a sentence, but the community service wasn't. One   
of the cops had taken a certain liking to me, and he helped fix   
it so that I spent my unoccupied time at the police station,   
typing, taking out the trash, snooping through their case files,   
that sort of thing. That was my introduction to forensic psyche,   
for what it's worth. I was sitting at Detective Nagle's desk   
when I read an article in the 'Law Enforcement Bulletin' about   
Brian Murphy teaching behavioral science at Oxford -- the only   
place in the world teaching it at the time, besides Quantico. So   
really, trying to kill Eric Magnus with a roll of quarters was   
the best thing that could have happened to me."   
  
By this time they'd reached the front porch of Nye House, its   
worn boards dusted with snow and shielded from the lit room   
inside by lacy half-curtains. Maybe it was the location or the   
topic of their conversation, but Mulder felt like a teenager   
walking his girlfriend home.   
  
He looked down at her and saw her pupils were wide in the honey-  
colored late afternoon light. He bent and lightly touched his   
lips to hers, a tentative kiss that quickly turned hungry. Her   
mouth had the faintly inorganic taste of lipstick. He knew   
he'd have "Evening Rust #7" or whatever it was all over his   
mouth in a minute, but he didn't care.  
  
After several seconds he pulled away and said, "Stay with me   
tonight. I won't sleep well if you're alone."  
  
Something in her face closed like a flower. "Mulder . . ."  
  
"Please," he said. Begging anyone but her would've been   
intolerable. "Why does it matter so much what other people   
think?"   
  
Her glance toward the covered window was so brief it probably   
hadn't been a conscious decision, but he caught it. Whatever   
she saw inside, it wasn't enough to make her move away.   
  
Scully looked up and ran her fingertips across his cheek, and he   
felt the slight drag of her skin over the stubble he developed   
late in the day. The look on her face was almost sad. "Okay,"   
she said. "Okay, I'll stay with you."   
  
He hoped that sorrowful look wasn't one of martyrdom. He'd   
almost rather she leave him than stay with him out of pity.   
Almost, but not tonight. Right now he was too needy, too tired   
and confused.  
  
She lifted her face to kiss him and he bent to meet her more than   
halfway. Her hands rested lightly on his elbows. This time her   
kiss was schoolgirl-chaste, but he felt a powerful response   
gathering from his skin inward. It was like sensing the momentum   
of an incoming wave by the way the tide drew back from the beach.  
  
He did not prevent her from stepping away. "Let's go in," she   
said. The spark in her eyes was not schoolgirlish at all. That   
was a look that could lead a man to damnation, and make him   
expect to enjoy the trip. Perhaps her earlier manner had been   
tenderness rather than pity. He hoped to God it was tenderness.   
  
As he took her hand and led her inside, the front room was   
blessedly empty. The door shut softly behind them.   
  
***** 


	12. resurgam12

Scully lay awake for some time after they made love, replaying   
the events of the last few days in her mind. Soon she would have   
to get up and re-bandage the cuts on her hands, but she didn't   
want to wake Mulder, who was profoundly asleep against her   
shoulder. With her thumb, she traced the orderly line of bone   
in his spine. Other than Emily and maybe her little brother   
Charlie, Scully didn't think she'd ever felt so protective of   
anyone.   
  
She watched shadows on the ceiling shift with the changing angle   
of moonlight that filtered over the top of the curtains. Strange   
to think the white-painted ceiling beams had been in place before   
her great-grandparents were born, likely before her ancestors had   
ever left Ireland. Before that, the beams had been trees. Deep   
at the center of those trees were growth rings that formed before   
Europeans ever came to America, and the cells inside those growth   
rings contained organic molecules that had been part of even more   
ancient animals and plants. Perhaps the molecular remains of   
Jesus' contemporaries were lying deep in the wood overhead. To   
accept the premise that matter was neither created nor destroyed   
was to accept that one really owned nothing, not even the atoms   
in one's bones. The thought gave her an eerie sensation of time   
collapsing in on itself.   
  
Her hands had really begun to throb. She turned and kissed   
Mulder's forehead, then carefully extricated herself from his   
embrace. He stirred but did not really seem to wake. After   
dressing and caring for her injuries, she went downstairs to   
retrieve her laptop. Soon she had set up a makeshift desk for   
herself on the table near the window in Mulder's room.   
  
If she wasn't going to sleep, she might as well write up   
Kristie's autopsy protocol. She plugged the serial jack of her   
digital recorder into the back of her laptop and watched as her   
dictated notes flowed onto the screen. During the autopsy, she'd   
indicated that the through-and-through wound to Kristie's thigh   
was "consistent with" a single, forceful knife thrust. Such a   
finding would indicate an assailant with a lot of upper body   
strength. Of course, the wound was also consistent with a   
scenario in which Kristie slipped and fell forward onto a sharp   
object being held upward at an angle. This might happen if she   
were pursuing a much smaller, weaker person who was backing away   
from her. Such apparently minor details would influence the   
prosecutor's decision about what, if any, charges would be filed   
against John McBer and his theoretical accomplice.  
  
Scully absently rubbed at the line of stitches on her left palm.   
The pattern of wounds across Kristie Herron's hands had been   
nearly identical. Yet even assuming her own experience was what   
it seemed, it was still possible that what happened to Kristie   
was unrelated. She decided to ask Detective Davis for copies of   
the autopsy photographs in the morning. Maybe the hilt mark on   
Kristie's thigh would offer some information.  
  
She organized and reorganized the autopsy data without coming to   
any conclusion that would bear up under the requisite burden of   
proof. If nothing else, Scully thought, she ought to be used to   
*that* after more than seven years. At last she wandered over to   
the window and drew the curtain aside. The frozen field sparkled   
in the light of a near-full moon, and beyond that the woods stood   
like a ragged line of still, gray figures. No, perhaps not   
entirely still. Was it her imagination, or did something pale   
occasionally flicker around the bases of the trees? The shifting   
shadows held her gaze for a long, long time.  
  
  
*****  
  
Mulder dreamt he was in the kitchen of his boyhood home, cutting   
out sugar cookies with Samantha. The girl was the 14-year-old   
he'd seen in his starlight vision and he was his adult self, but   
somehow this seemed only natural. The only mystery was why   
they'd spent so much time apart.   
  
The trick to making sugar cookies was to roll the dough out while   
it was still very cold, and Mulder had to stand up and throw his   
back into rolling out the near-frozen mound. Samantha was doing   
more chatting than cutting, commenting on the more eccentric   
cookie cutters as she lifted them one at a time from the large   
bowl in front of her. The Mulder siblings had liked to root   
through summer-end garage sales for peculiar cookie cutters and   
hoard them in anticipation of the holidays. It got so Christmas   
wasn't the same without cookies shaped like Friar Tuck or the   
head of Mayor McCheese.  
  
Despite her apparent distraction, Samantha had two full cookie   
sheets in front of her, one balanced awkwardly on the other. She   
struck one with her elbow as she reached across the table for   
their dented fleur-de-lis cutter, and only her quick grab saved   
it from clattering to the floor.  
  
Mulder set the rolling pin down and held his hands out to her.   
"Here -- I'll give those to Mom," he said. Samantha handed him   
the sheets, and he turned to set them on the counter.   
  
Mrs. Mulder shut the oven door and stood up. She moved with a   
strange, slow stiffness.   
  
"Mom?" Mulder asked.  
  
He realized her hair was dark and wet-looking. When she turned,   
her features were a corpse's, bloated and blackened almost beyond   
recognition.  
  
*****  
  
Mulder cried out and sat up in bed. For an instant he was   
disoriented, unable to recognize the room faintly outlined by the   
glow from Scully's laptop.  
  
"Mulder?"  
  
He turned to find Scully at the window, moonlight shining through   
the filmy fabric of her nightgown. She seemed to be standing too   
close to the glass, as if she were a lover watching in eager   
anticipation of her beloved's return. He looked away, unable to   
bear the freezing feeling he got when he looked at her.  
  
"What is it? Did you have a bad dream?" He heard her bare feet   
padding across the carpet. Her fingers were cold when she put her   
hand in his arm; she'd been standing at the window a long time.   
Chill radiated from her as from an open grave.  
  
"Mulder?" She asked again.  
  
He reached up and seized her, crushing her against him.   
"Whatever's out there doesn't need you. *I* need you."  
  
"Mulder, stop it! You're hurting me." He did not immediately   
yield to her struggles. Something dark and desperate in him   
refused to let her go.   
  
When he finally released her, he sat forward and rested his   
elbows on his knees, ashamed. She was a luminous figure in his   
peripheral vision, lifting her hand to her injured side. "What's   
the matter with you?" she asked.  
  
Everything. Everything was the matter. "Scully . . . can I ask   
you something?" His mouth felt as dry as ash.  
  
Whatever she heard in his voice made her speak more gently.   
"Sure . . . what is it?" He felt the bed springs shift as she   
sat down.   
  
There was an odd humming feeling in his head. "When we went to   
my mother's apartment, did I see the body?"  
  
Silence. //She doesn't know what to say.//   
  
"You don't remember," she said.  
  
Mulder swallowed against the burning at the back of his throat.   
"Maybe I do now."   
  
Scully began to talk too quickly in that clinical voice she used   
when she wanted to distance herself from something. "Repression   
is a normal psychological defense mechanism. I know when I came   
home from the hospital after my sister--"  
  
Mulder tuned her out. Disjointed images flashed in his mind.   
Socks. White socks beneath the cuffs of loose teal slacks,   
resting at one end of the couch. Scully arguing with one of the   
cops: //"Leave him alone. He's upset."//  
  
//"What the hell is he doing here?"//  
  
Another officer spoke: //"He flashed a badge at the door. How   
was I supposed to know he was her son?"//  
  
The smell of death was already strong, overpowering the chemical   
smell from the leaky gas line in the oven. A smell like things   
left on the beach after storm breakers receded; like oysters with   
gaping shells.  
  
Her hands lay folded on her stomach, relaxed as if in sleep. The   
only clue to what had occurred was the faint greenish tinge to   
the skin on top and the deep red color just visible on the   
underside of her fingers. The tissues had begun to swell just   
slightly, causing her thin gold watchband to impress a groove   
around her wrist. The hands of the watch still twitched forward,   
impervious.  
  
//"Mulder, come on. Let's go. Let's let them finish up in   
here."// Scully had tugged at his arm, urging him toward the   
door. He remained, immovable.  
  
His mother had not been dead long, 36 hours, 48 at most. Yet her   
head, encased in a plastic bag secured with a rubber band, seemed   
to belong to a corpse dead far longer. Her expiring breath had   
filled the plastic with moisture and microbes soon went to work.  
  
Beneath her mercifully closed eyes her eyeballs had gone flat,   
forming deep hollows in a face otherwise swollen like a drowning   
victim's. The deterioration was such that Mulder had at first   
allowed himself to hope it wasn't his mother after all. Surely   
this was not the woman who had left a message on his answering   
machine only days before.  
  
But her identification had been laid out neatly on the arm of the   
couch, and a scar she'd gotten while washing out a glass that   
broke made a familiar checkmark-shape across her knuckle.  
  
Other memories intruded on his recollection of the scene: the   
smell of gun powder; the hot, sticky feeling of his father's   
blood seeping through his clothes, the pool of it spreading and   
spreading.  
  
Mulder felt his bowels turn to liquid, and he quickly got up out   
of bed.  
  
When he returned, he felt shaky and sweaty, as if he had been ill   
for days. As an afterthought, he drew over the wastepaper basket   
just in case he threw up.  
  
Scully was buzzing around him, turning on lights, fetching him   
water. She located a thermometer in some inner pocket of her bag   
and coaxed him into putting it under his tongue.  
  
He obliged her, though he doubted he was feverish. He shut his   
eyes against the glare of the lamp and simply felt himself   
breathe. There was something satisfying about hearing the air   
rush in and out of his nostrils -- proof he still belonged to the   
land of the living.  
  
Mulder felt no emotion he could identify, which was fine with   
him. It was as if his heart had broken, and then the sharp   
slivers had been wrapped in thick cotton batting to prevent them   
from doing any more damage. For the second time that night, the   
world disintegrated into a collection of disjointed sensations --   
the pressure of his body against the cotton sheets, Scully's feet   
patting on the carpet, the almost-inaudible hum coming from her   
laptop.  
  
Before long she disturbed him to take thermometer out of his   
mouth. "97.8," she said.  
  
Ah. So this was just shock. Nothing remarkable about that. He   
heard her pick up the glass of water from the bedside table. "I   
want you to drink as much of this is you can," she said.  
  
He was tempted to ignore her, but he made himself drink the   
thing. He didn't enjoy it. He hurt when he moved, though not   
physically. The pain went deeper than that.  
  
Scully made him drink another glass of water before she shut out   
the light and got back into bed with him. She wadded the   
blankets around him and coaxed him into sitting curled against   
her with his head on her shoulder.  
  
To his dismay, she started to pray over him: "Hail, Holy Queen,   
Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do   
we cry, poor, banished children of Eve . . ."  
  
"Please don't do that," Mulder said. As far as he was concerned,   
prayers were for funerals, and he wasn't dead just yet.   
  
She fell silent and rested her cheek against his forehead, as if   
very weary. He could tell from the way she was holding him that   
she was afraid for him. She pressed the coverlet against his   
shoulder as if she were stanching the blood from a wound. Some   
sick, childish part of him was glad. He tried telling himself he   
did not need attention that badly, but it didn't work. He was   
well beyond the point of reasoning with himself. //This would be   
a really good time for Scully's God to exist.// "Tell me a   
Sister Spooky story," he said.  
  
"Mulder . . . that's not what you need to hear right now," she   
said. Sister Spooky, known to the rest of the world as Sister   
Mary Carnahan, IHM, had been a veritable encyclopedia of bizarre   
Church trivia. Most of her stories involved things like   
miraculously preserved tongues and statues that bled. At times,   
Mulder knew his interest made Scully uncomfortable. He'd had to   
assure her he wasn't simply picking her brain for a Catholic   
version of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Sister Spooky's world   
was filled with mystery, and in mystery there was hope.  
  
"It is. It is what I need to hear," Mulder said.  
  
She sighed and was silent for a few moments. "The only one I can   
think of is completely inappropriate," she said.  
  
"I don't care. It'll do fine," Mulder said.  
  
"It's got death in it," she warned him.  
  
"Even better."  
  
She took a deep breath and said, "Well, according to Sister Mary,   
Death takes the form of a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Underneath   
the hat is a skull, and the eye sockets are dark. He's blind, so   
when he wanders the streets at night, he goes sniffing at the air   
to find his way. You can hear him coming because he pushes a   
heavy cart full of the bodies of people he's come to take away.  
  
Mulder curled more closely against Scully, like a child moving  
closer to the camp fire during a ghost story.  
  
"Once, a long time ago, Death could see. He was walking through   
the Irish farm country one evening when St. Peter came down to   
earth and started walking beside him. All the sensible farmers   
were already in their houses, but one farmer and his servant were   
still mowing hay.  
  
"At the sound of Death's cart, the farmer dropped to the ground   
and whispered for his servant to do the same. But the servant   
was a simple man, and he kept mowing and singing.  
  
"Death was angry that the man was not afraid. He pointed his   
bony finger at him and said, 'You. In eight days that fine voice   
of yours will be stilled. I advise you to get shriven now,   
because once your eight days are up I will come for you.'"  
  
"But the servant only sang louder, and that made   
Death even more angry. 'Very well, you had your chance,' he   
said. 'You should have seen the priest when I bade you. Instead   
you will come with me now, with all of your sins on your head.'  
  
"Then St. Peter stepped in and said, 'How dare you wish such a   
death on an honest man doing honest work? Remember, you were   
made to chasten man, not to rule him.' And he struck the glowing   
fires out of the creature's eyes."  
  
Scully lapsed into silence, and for time the only sound was the   
hum of her laptop. "That's a great story," Mulder said.   
  
"It's not great. It's kind of twisted. I think some of the   
parents went to the priest after Sister told us that one," she   
said. He wondered if her own parents had complained. The story   
must have made quite an impression on her; Mulder suspected she   
was quoting parts of it verbatim.  
  
"I liked it. Thank you," he said. Somehow the idea that Death   
had limitations was very comforting.  
  
She patted his thigh through the thick blankets. "Think you can   
sleep?"  
  
Unconsciousness sounded like a very nice idea -- if only he could   
keep from dreaming. "I think so. Can you?"  
  
She hesitated a moment and he knew she'd heard his unspoken   
reproach. No more lurking at the window and frightening him.   
"Yes, I think so," she said.  
  
They settled back down into bed, and this time Mulder's sleep was   
untroubled by dreams.  
  
*****  
  
Full sunlight was shining over the top of the curtains when   
Scully woke up. She felt better rested than she had since   
leaving work on Friday. Slowly it dawned heard this was wrong.   
It was Monday morning, and agents who expected to miss work were   
supposed to call in by 8 AM. She sat up on the edge of the bed   
and phoned Skinner's office, leaving a message with Kim. If the   
AD was as "enthusiastic" about keeping her and Mulder out of   
Washington and out of trouble as he claimed, then he would   
understand. She let Mulder sleep as she dressed. The events of   
the past few days had likely been even more harrowing for him   
than they had been for her.   
  
She took the room key from the nightstand and slipped out of the   
room, hoping there was still something left of the continental   
breakfast buffet downstairs. Scully hesitated briefly on the   
landing, listening to the sound of law officers' voices. She   
could feel the bracing fresh air even where she stood on the   
stairway -- men must have been going in and out the front door   
for some time. The investigators were packing up and going home:   
scene processed, suspect in custody, case closed.  
  
The thought made Scully uneasy. She didn't doubt that John McBer   
had meant little good to Kristie Herron. Perhaps he even planned   
to kill her. But had he actually committed the murder?   
  
For that matter, to what extent had Scully's own inexplicable   
experience colored her view of the facts and Kristie's murder   
case? The whole situation made her position extremely difficult.   
The young woman's family certainly deserved some satisfaction   
from the justice system. But then, if he was innocent, so did   
John McBer.  
  
She continued down the stairs and found officers in civilian garb   
chatting next to their packed bags, and brushing crumbs from   
cheese danishes off their shirt fronts and mustaches. Two   
teenagers, a boy and a girl, wearing crisp white aprons, cleared   
mostly-empty trays of fruit, pastries and muffins from a long   
table.   
  
Detective Davis, wearing khaki slacks and a tweed blazer, stood   
right by the remaining tray of little muffins. Scully braved the   
possibility of his curious blue gaze as she grabbed a paper plate   
and began loading a basic breakfast for herself and Mulder on it.   
She couldn't help glancing up at the boy server as he reached   
for, then drew back from, the tray she was picking at. The kid   
was skinny and pimply-faced, probably about 17 years old. His   
name tag said "Josh." Scully glanced up at Josh and couldn't   
help imagining a young Mulder, awkward and silent and sad,   
working in his former neighbors' inn because they were the only   
people who would tolerate him.  
  
Josh looked up at her and she saw his eyes were dark rather than   
green-gold-brown.  
  
"Hi," Scully said, smiling.  
  
"Hi," the boy said, and immediately found something else to do on   
the other end of the table. His co-worker, a girl whose nametag   
said "Nicole," rolled her eyes and started brushing crumbs off   
the tablecloth.  
  
Scully forced herself to seem as disinterested as possible as   
detective Davis stepped up beside her.   
  
"Agent Scully, it's good to see you up and around again."   
  
She managed a tight smile and consciously refrained from fussing   
with the bandages on her hands. "Thank you," she replied. "I   
wanted to ask you whether I could examine the photos of Kristie   
Herron's autopsy."   
  
Davis looked mildly surprised. "Sure. I have no problem with   
that. But may I ask why?"  
  
Scully swallowed, debated whether to demur or to be upfront about   
her questions concerning John McBer's guilt. McBer might indeed   
be a poor excuse for a human being, even a murderer, but he was   
not necessarily Kristie's killer. "I want to study the wound   
pattern again, specifically the sharp-force wound to the thigh.   
I want to be sure about the angle of attack before I write up the   
protocol."  
  
"The angle of attack?" Davis asked, frowning. "I thought we   
were pretty clear that the attack was a thrust from someone   
sitting or kneeling low to the ground, perhaps in a chair. What   
happened to make you change your mind?"  
  
"I haven't changed my mind. Not exactly," Scully said. "It's   
just that I want to explore all possibilities."  
  
"Possibilities?" Davis echoed. Suddenly he held his hand out as   
if he wanted to usher her away from the crowd. "Can I talk with   
you? Privately?" he asked.  
  
She blinked at him, trying not to show that she was at all   
concerned. "Yes, I suppose so," she said. She walked with him a   
short distance to the lace-covered window near the corner with   
the pot-bellied stove.  
  
"Listen, I'm not good at politics, and I can't think of a politic   
way to say this. Dr. Scully, I don't want this to be repeat of   
the LaPierre case," Davis said quietly.  
  
The statement stunned Scully into silence. Amber Lynn LaPierre   
was the little girl Mulder believed had "vanished into   
starlight." The case was still wending its way through the court   
system, but the defense was making a big deal of "an FBI   
profiler's" dismissal of the LaPierres as suspects.   
  
"Excuse me?" Scully asked. "I don't think I understand."  
  
Davis looked pained and glanced away toward the window, is if   
Scully were forcing him into territory where he didn't want to   
go. "Look, we all have tough breaks in our lives. I've had   
mine, you've had yours, and Agent Mulder has had his. But as   
professionals, we have to make sure those breaks don't cloud our   
judgment about a case. I know you lost her daughter two years   
ago--"  
  
"You what?" Scully asked, louder than she'd meant to. Heads in   
the room turned. She felt heat spreading across her face.  
  
Davis looked apologetic. "Patty Herron mentioned you stopped by   
the other night; she said you'd lost a child. I'm sorry to hear   
that. I really am. But reading supernatural elements into this   
case is not going to bring that child back."  
  
There was a dim singing in Scully's ears and she felt a powerful   
urge to slap him. Her voice shook slightly when she spoke: "You   
don't know what you're talking about. Agent Mulder and I have   
always conducted our cases with the utmost professionalism . . ."  
  
Davis held up his hands, a disarming gesture. "I'm not trying to   
be offensive. I'm just trying to make sure this case gets the   
best investigation possible. The Herron family deserves that   
much. You agree with me, right?"  
  
Despite his assertion that he was no good at politics, Davis had   
backed her into a corner. "Of course," Scully said.   
  
"Okay. I can have the photos sent up to you in a few hours.   
That all right?" Davis asked.  
  
"Yes," Scully said, not liking how quickly he was giving in. She   
sensed he was throwing her a bone.  
  
"Good," Davis said, giving her a conciliatory smile.   
  
Scully moved away from him quickly, heading upstairs with her   
paper plate laden with fruit and muffins. Maybe it was her   
imagination, but she felt every eye in the room on her as she   
exited.  
  
She found Mulder awake, sitting naked with his legs folded up   
under him among the tangled sheets on the bed. He still looked   
sleepy and a little dazed.  
  
He blinked at her as she came in. "What's wrong?"  
  
Scully set the plate down on the nightstand and sat on the edge   
of the bed. "I was talking to Davis. He said Patty told him   
about Emily, and that I shouldn't let what happened affect my   
'professionalism.'"  
  
Mulder held his arm out to her and she allowed herself to be   
coaxed into lying down with him, the warmth of his body pressed   
against her back. She felt his lips brushing the back of her   
neck as he said, "Davis is an ass."  
  
She exhaled deeply, feeling some of the tension leave her body.   
She realized that she was still very tired. "He's not. He's not   
an ass. He's just an ordinary detective trying to do his job,   
and he doesn't want 'Mrs. Spooky' messing things up for him."  
  
"Is that how you think of yourself now?" His tone was regretful.  
  
"I don't know," Scully said softly. She hardly knew what to   
think of herself anymore. Seven years ago she had been very like   
detective Davis -- skeptical, conventional, good at her job, up   
to a point. Since then everything had changed.  
  
"You are Dana Scully. You're a good investigator, a good   
doctor. And you're a good friend," he said.  
  
She couldn't quite help fishing for more. "A friend? That's all   
I am?"   
  
"What, you want the part about being the bright light around   
which my otherwise dim and twisted universe revolves, too?"  
  
She lifted his hand to her lips, suddenly very grateful for him.   
"I'm glad you're doing better this morning," she said. His   
request for a story about death last night had frightened her   
little. Maybe if they played their cards right, only one of them   
would be crazy at a time.  
  
"I'll make it through, one way or another. And so will you," he   
said.  
  
At that moment she believed him. "Mulder, can I ask you   
something?"  
  
He must have heard the faint tremor in her voice because he   
pulled her closer. "Sure."  
  
"Did I make a mistake with Emily? I mean by stepping into the   
role of her mother so quickly, pursuing such aggressive treatment   
. . ." she could feel Mulder shaking his head.  
  
"You loved her. Every choice you made was based on that. That's   
not wrong," Mulder said.  
  
It took a few seconds before she could get the words out: "She   
didn't love me back." Tears she'd been stifling for too long   
flooded her eyes and ran down either side of her nose.  
  
"Hey," Mulder said, then tugged at her shoulder until she rolled   
over and curled against his chest. "You don't know that."  
  
"She didn't love me the way I loved her," Scully said. No one   
could deny that. Emily had at best tolerated her. The little   
girl had allowed herself to be held, but would neither snuggle   
close nor push Scully away. It was as if her biological mother   
were an inconsequential environmental variable, like the weather.   
It was this horrible truth that whispered to Scully in her   
nightmares and which Irv Stuckey had played upon so successfully.  
  
Mulder sighed, and Scully felt him try to mold his body to hers,   
as if trying to absorb the shock from some impact. "Everyone and   
everything she'd ever loved had been taken away from her. She   
was probably afraid to love anybody after that. She needed more   
time. It's just that time's the one thing she didn't have."   
  
Scully cried for several minutes, exploring the sharp edges of   
the broken place inside her. She thought she had done a fairly   
good job of healing after two years. Would that broken place   
ever go away?  
  
Once she was done crying, she lay with her head in the hollow of   
Mulder shoulder. "Irv Stuckey said something yesterday," she   
said. She felt his muscles tense.  
  
"What?" he asked.   
  
Scully had already told Mulder all the shameful things Irv had   
said about him, but not the final part about Emily. That had   
been too horrible to speak of.  
  
"He said . . . he said he knew an old down-island woman who told   
him a story about someone who was killed by the South Road Ghost.   
A deaf woman. And he wanted to know if I heard Emily calling   
me."  
  
"He said that to you? I'll kill him."   
  
Scully didn't like the tension she could feel building in him.   
Mulder was impulsive enough at times to make her worry he might   
really do something foolish.  
  
"I need you to do something else for me," she said, hoping to   
harness that emotion to some constructive goal. "Can you find   
out who this deaf woman might have been -- if anyone's still   
alive who might have known her? It's just . . . it's something I   
need to know."   
  
"This whole South Road Ghost thing has gone way too far. The   
story about Mary Brown is a story to scare kids, Scully.   
Whatever's out there in those woods does not represent payback   
time for mothers who make bad choices. It has its own reasons   
for doing what it does. People have taken it and twisted it to   
prop up whatever social moral they happen to be selling. That's   
what really bothers me about situations like this. Some real   
tragedy happens, and suddenly fifty armchair moralists have to   
leap up and co-opt the facts to fit their own prejudices."  
  
The passion in his voice was such that Scully suspected he wasn't   
speaking only of the South Road Ghost and Kristie Herron. She   
remembered what Irv had said, //"Ask him what his mama heard out   
in those trees."//   
  
"Mulder, I would feel better if you asked," she said.  
  
The momentum of his rant could not be stopped so easily. "We all   
live our lives in a complex, bewildering gray area, but as soon   
as we're dead, everything's supposed to become a 'Friday the   
13th' allegory for moral transgression."   
  
She tried another tack. "Aren't you at least a little curious to   
find out what this thing is, if it's not what it seems to be?"   
  
Curiosity was his Achilles heel, and they both knew it. She felt   
him exhale, as if releasing some of his outrage. "I can ask," he   
said. "But I'm not curious enough to lose you over it. I don't   
think we should spend another night out here."  
  
"No," she assured him. "I just have a few things to tie up. I   
need access to the photos from Kristie's autopsy to finish the   
protocol, for one thing."  
  
Mulder raised up on his elbow to look at the clock. It was a   
little after 11. "Probably the place for me to start is the   
Dukes County Historical Society in Edgartown. They're a lot more   
reliable than Irv Stuckey is."  
  
"Would it be possible for you to run me up to the store before   
you go?" she asked. "I need some things to help check out a   
theory."  
  
In fact, she wanted a long, sharp, serrated knife, some   
children's modeling dough, preferably Play-Doh brand, and if   
possible, cut-proof Kevlar gloves. Whether or not the autopsy   
photos showed anything conclusive, the knife and the Play-Doh   
would help her replicate the wound pattern.   
  
The store clerk and everyone else in town would probably think   
she was a nut, but then, as Mrs. Spooky, she wouldn't want to   
disappoint them.  
  
***** 


	13. resurgam13

Later, Mulder dropped Scully back off at the inn with her bag of   
peculiar purchases. She'd explained the forensic uses of Play-  
Doh to him long ago. Unlike clay or most generic children's   
modeling dough, the Playskool brand had a very high surface   
tension that caused it to tear at the edges of a puncture rather   
than deform, much like human skin. This made it a useful, if   
crude, medium for re-creating the pattern of wounds.  
  
He watched her walk up the steps of Nye House, knowing that she'd   
spend the afternoon busily slashing at Play-Doh and dictating the   
results onto her recorder. An eccentric investigative method   
perhaps, but at least it was cleaner than the experiments   
attributed to Sherlock Holmes. He was supposed to have stabbed   
pig carcasses with a fencing foil.  
  
One she was inside, Mulder pulled out of the gravel drive, which   
was muddy and much-rutted now from the rain and the unusually   
high volume of traffic over the last few days. But at the moment   
all the storm clouds were gone, and the afternoon was shaping up   
to be a fine one. The sunlight had the silvery clarity that   
seemed to belong only to the Atlantic Northeast in the spring,   
and as Mulder made his way along the dirt track of Rural Route   
1, he noticed that the canopy of bare branches overhead was   
beginning to develop tiny green leaf buds.  
  
Seasons changed more slowly out on the coast, and this spring had   
been colder and wetter than many. And yet, there was only so   
long that winter could last. After one of the hardest winters of   
his life, Mulder was more than ready for spring.   
  
The Dukes County Historical Society was a collection of buildings   
along an Edgartown side street, only a few blocks away from the   
jail he'd visited yesterday. He parked his car in the near-empty   
lot behind the Gale Huntington Library, a two-story building done   
in the same square, black-and-white Greek Revival style that had   
been once so popular with whaling captains. The library   
building, which also housed a maritime museum, was a modern   
imitation of an old house, but truly old structures dotted the   
Historical Society grounds around it. Gray, shake-sided Thomas   
Cooke House stood off to one side, looking much as it had during   
the youth of King George III.   
  
As Mulder got out of his car and started up the walkway toward   
the library, he found that Cooke House both drew and curiously   
repelled his gaze. It was not an especially attractive building,   
square in front but with a steeply sloping back that gave it a   
slightly barn-like appearance. Its curtainless windows reflected   
the early afternoon sun, giving the panes a blank, staring look.   
Even the replica of an 18th century kitchen garden, which would   
brighten the place in the coming months, was currently brown and   
dead.  
  
In all likelihood the house that had once stood by the South Road   
Burying Ground had been nearly identical to this one, with the   
exception of the rough fieldstone base that still remained among   
the weeds. It occurred to him that there might be something   
unwise, if not actually unhealthy, about Vineyarders' attachment   
to the past. What did it say about a place when three-quarters   
of the houses in town were built by the dead?   
  
He walked up the damp brick steps to the library's front door.   
Despite its house-like exterior, the inside was clearly that of a   
public building. A black, rubberized mat lay over the shining   
wooden floorboards and a rack of informational pamphlets stood at   
the foot of the grand staircase, which was currently cordoned off   
with a velvet rope. Mulder had no business upstairs in the   
maritime museum anyway, so he turned left into what he recalled   
was the library's reference section.   
  
The place was largely as he remembered it, with bookshelves   
running across the width of the room and glass display cases   
standing along the walls. A few computer terminals were new   
additions, but the room had the same familiar smell, one of   
bookbinding glue and dust and the faint musty scent that rose   
from the radiators. A hushed smell. It made Mulder think of   
autumn leaves and damp sneakers and the great wooden card catalog   
cabinet that had once stood in the corner. He recalled being   
very pleased when he was tall enough to look down into the   
topmost drawer. Until then, he'd needed a chair to access 20% of   
the alphabet.   
  
He wondered what made computers so much better than a card   
catalog file, anyway. Nobody's card catalog ever crashed and   
died when the power went out.   
  
At the moment the library seemed deserted, so he walked up to the   
information desk and rang the handbell. After a few moments a   
petite middle-aged lady in a denim jumper walked out of the back   
room. Her gray hair had been cut in the same quasi-military   
style seen on statues of Roman soldiers -- the same crummy   
haircut Mulder's father had given him every summer of his   
boyhood, as a matter of fact. It probably looked better on the   
librarian.  
  
"Can I help you?" the lady asked.  
  
"Yes--I hope so," Mulder said. "I'm hoping to track down the   
source of a story. One related to Mary Brown and the South Road   
Ghost."  
  
The librarian smiled at him and said, "You're looking for   
'Haunted Martha's Vineyard' by Vinton Marsden. It might be   
checked out -- it's very popular with the kids."  
  
"I know--I've read it. I used to come here a lot. My name's Fox   
Mulder." Somewhat to his relief, the woman's face showed no   
recognition.   
  
"I'm Sue Bugay," she said, and shook his hand.   
  
"Actually I was looking for a living source, a person. A friend   
of mine told me a woman living somewhere down-island might know   
something about the story. Apparently a deaf woman died many   
years ago after meeting with an entity out in the woods outside   
Chilmark."  
  
"An entity . . .?" Sue blinked at him for moment from behind her   
glasses. "Well, there's--" he got the impression she was   
deliberately omitting a name, "there is a woman in our Island   
Oral History Project who tells a story something like that. Can   
I ask why you need to know?"  
  
Mulder pulled his badge out of his coat pocket. He hadn't wanted   
to rely on the symbol of authority to get information, but he   
supposed he could understand Sue's reluctance. He showed her his   
ID and said, "It's possible the event she remembers is relevant   
to an open murder case."  
  
Sue's eyes went wide. "Not that poor girl who fell over a cliff   
last week?" she asked.  
  
There weren't a lot of homicides on the Vineyard, so there was no   
point in being evasive. "Yes, ma'am."  
  
"But that can't be. The story Mrs. Langmann tells happened   
before she was even born, and she's over 90 years old. There   
must be some mistake," Sue said.  
  
"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Langmann, if that's possible. Is there   
way I could contact her?" Mulder asked.  
  
Sue looked a little embarrassed at having given away the woman's   
name. "I'll call her and ask her if she's willing to contact   
you," she said, and walked back into the other room. Apparently   
she wasn't thrilled at the idea of sending a nut with a badge and   
a ghost story off to bother a little old lady.   
  
Mulder wandered among the shelves, brushing his fingertips over   
the book spines. Some of the titles were new, but many were   
familiar to him from years ago. On impulse, he tugged out a book   
called, "Old Families of the Lower Cape and Islands," and   
examined the card tucked into the inside pocket. According to   
the date stamps, the book had been checked out a dozen times   
between 1959 and 1983. Somehow it was nice to see the faded   
numbers at the top of the card. If something as insubstantial as   
an index card could still be in good condition after 41 years, he   
might stand a fighting chance after all.   
  
He slipped the book back into place and examined a volume about   
clothing worn at about the time of the Revolutionary War. Mulder   
was contemplating historical female undergarments, which   
apparently consisted of canvas, whalebone, steel and leather, and   
imagining the inconvenient contortions that would be required to   
get Scully out of such a thing, when Sue returned with a name and   
address written on a slip of paper. He shut the book firmly and   
put it away.  
  
"The woman you're looking for is Amelie Langmann. I just spoke   
with her granddaughter, who says it's all right for you to come   
out. Mrs. Langmann is completely deaf, so she doesn't use the   
phone. You'll have to meet her in person. For the next few   
hours her great-grandson should be there to translate."  
  
Mulder scanned the paper she'd given him and saw that the address   
was a rural one, south of Vineyard Haven. "Thank you," he said.  
  
She seemed to hesitate as he turned to leave. "Mr. Mulder?   
  
Mulder stopped as he carefully talked the paper slip into his   
wallet. "Yes?"  
  
"There's . . . something else you might want to look at." She   
went into the back room again and returned carrying a large book.   
The pages looked as if they had been hand-cut to varying widths   
and then stitched together, giving the edges a rippling look.   
  
Sue set the book down on the information desk and said, "This is   
a family Bible dating to the 1740s. The Chilmark courthouse   
burned down in 1826, so family effects like this are the only   
existing record of the town's early history."  
  
She sat the book down on the desk and gently opened the leather   
cover. The pages inside had turned a mellow brown at the edges,   
but Mulder could still glimpse the printer's information near the   
bottom. The book had been manufactured by some company in   
Boston, or what looked like "Bofton," with the antiquated long   
"S."   
  
Sue turned the first page over and revealed a complicated   
genealogy written in several different hands on the back.   
Carefully ruled lines connected the names of parents, children,   
stepchildren, half brothers and sisters born a generation apart,   
and others whose relationships were not immediately clear.   
Scanning the page, Mulder saw that the genealogy began with a   
marriage in 1742 and ended with a death in 1927. Most of the   
dead had tiny black crosses painted next to their names, making   
him wonder about those who did not. Were they lost but not known   
to be dead? Dead but presumably not resting in peace?  
  
"If there was a historical Mary Brown, this may be her," Sue   
said, not quite touching the paper as she pointed to a black spot   
on the family ledger. One Robert Brown had apparently married a   
woman in 1773 whose memory the family was not eager to keep   
alive. His wife's name had been obliterated with a bar of black   
ink.   
  
"My family feels the same way about me," Mulder said.   
  
If Sue was amused, she didn't show it. "You can see that Robert   
and his two children died in the same year, 1777. This younger   
one is unusual in that he or she was entered into the family book   
without a name; there's only the single date."  
  
Mulder shifted his position a little so he could see past her   
pointing finger. The record showed that the Browns' first child   
was a daughter, Susannah, born in 1774 and just three or four   
years old when she died. The second child was memorialized with   
only a date and a tiny cross.   
  
"Why would they do that -- record that a baby was born but not   
write down its name?" Mulder asked.  
  
Sue shook her head. "Perhaps it died so young it never got one,   
although in that case it would be strange to record its birth at   
all. I expect that someone just felt especially bad about the   
fact that it died."  
  
"And maybe Mom and Dad weren't around to name it by then," Mulder   
said.  
  
"That could be."  
  
Mulder glanced up at the librarian and asked, "Where did this   
come from?"   
  
"It's mine," Sue said, straightening up. She pointed at the   
entry on the bottom of the page: Maria Flint, b. July 1888, d.,   
December 1927. "She was my father's mother."  
  
For the first time Mulder realized he was talking about more than   
folklore -- this was family history. As tactfully as he could,   
he asked, "Did any family traditions survive? Any information at   
all about the woman whose name was blacked out?"  
  
Sue shook her head. "I can tell you that the earliest written   
record of the South Road Ghost story was from about 1850, in a   
letter from a woman to her cousin on the mainland. She mentions   
the story as if it's already quite old -- a headless woman   
condemned to wander the cliffs on stormy night's after murdering   
both her daughters."  
  
"The second baby was a girl?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Maybe. That's the only detail that gives the story any   
credence, really. Society's imagination tends to default to male   
-- even more so in Victorian times than now." Suddenly Sue   
seemed to realize what she'd been implying and backed away from   
that precipice. "It's all just folklore, really. I'm sure the   
real Mary Brown, if she existed, would hardly recognize herself   
in the stories that have grown up around her."  
  
"Thank you," Mulder said, for once seeing no reason to force   
someone out of her comfortable beliefs into the world of extreme   
possibilities. After all, he found it comforting to imagine that   
the Vineyard was very ordinary, too. He copied down the relevant   
information from the book's frontispiece and walked back out to   
the car.  
  
*****  
  
Half an hour later he guided his car over the deeply pitted   
gravel drive leading up to Mrs. Langmann's house. It was a white   
Victorian with pale yellow shutters, the paint peeling slightly   
from the sides. Turned-wood posts which held up the overhang   
above the front porch hinted at the house's age. People   
sometimes faked Victorian gingerbreading of the kind that hung   
from the house's eaves, but nobody bothered with carving wooden   
posts anymore.  
  
As Mulder walked up the steps to the front porch, a shaggy gray   
cat lifted its head from the mold-spotted lawn chair seat it lay   
on. It blinked its yellow eyes at him, then fled when he rang   
the doorbell. Footsteps sounded inside and a teenage boy opened   
the door. The kid's slouch and oversized clothes gave the   
impression that he'd been picked up out of the lost-and-found at   
the local bus station.   
  
Mulder bit back the first comment that came to mind, about what   
the kid was doing a wearing Marlon Brando's pants. Did it mean   
he was getting old when he felt like making fun of teenagers'   
fashion sense? //Nah.//  
  
"You the guy who's here to see my O.G?" the kid asked.  
  
Mulder couldn't help giving him a sharp look. As far as he knew,   
"O.G." was a gangland term meeting "original gangster."  
  
"Your O.G.?" Mulder asked. The boy opened the rusty screen door   
and let Mulder into the house.   
  
The kid looked a little embarrassed by Mulder scrutiny. "My old   
Grandma," he said.  
  
The front room was small and square, lit only by the sun through   
the windows. A worn rug partially covered its bare hardwood   
floor. The furniture had the spare, slightly space-agey look   
popular in the early-60s, and a quick glance revealed that the   
television had knobs and rabbit-ear antennas. Mulder wondered if   
Ed Sullivan or Lawrence Welk would automatically appear if he   
turned it on.  
  
The kid led Mulder back into the little kitchen, where modern-  
looking appliances sat next to older things on the gleaming   
counter. Whether Mrs. Langmann used her modern conveniences was   
doubtful -- the bowl of an electric bread-kneading machine was   
stuffed full of what looked like magazine clippings, and what   
appeared to be an honest-to-goodness wooden kneading trough sat   
with a cloth over it on a sturdy aluminum table.  
  
The kid muttered an invitation for Mulder to sit in one of the   
aluminum-legged chairs and then wandered out the back door,   
presumably looking for his great-grandmother. Before long the   
door opened again and a truly ancient little woman walked in,   
wiping garden dirt from her hands on a dishcloth tied at her   
waist.  
  
Mulder stood and asked, "Mrs. Langmann?" then suddenly felt like   
an idiot for speaking aloud to a deaf woman.   
  
He needn't have worried, because she answered, "Yes?" Apparently   
she read lips.   
  
He held his hand out to her and she pressed it gently between her   
cool, knobby fingers. "I'm Fox Mulder. Susan Bugay suggested I   
meet with you," he said.  
  
Her great-grandson had followed her into the kitchen, and he   
signed a translation of Mulder's statement with surprising   
deftness.  
  
"Oh! You mean about that girl that died," the old lady said.   
She spoke with the flat, slightly throaty tones of the longtime   
deaf.   
  
"Yes, ma'am. I wanted to speak to you about the South Road   
Ghost."  
  
She peered at the boy as he translated, showing no surprise at   
Mulder's request. Her heavy-lidded eyes were a pale, clouded   
blue, and Mulder wondered if she weren't partially blind as well.   
"Jeff, be a love and fetch us another chair," Mrs. Langmann said.  
  
Jeff headed back into the living room, and while he was gone Mrs.   
Langmann washed the rest of the garden soil from her hands at the   
sink. She seemed to be in no hurry; Mulder supposed that being   
more than 90 years old put the passage of time in perspective.   
  
Jeff returned carrying a straight-backed wooden chair with a   
cushion tied over the seat. He set this down by the table, and   
Mrs. Langmann perched on the edge of it. She drew her kneading   
trough to her and lifted the cloth off. Mulder and Jeff sat down   
in the other two chairs, with the boy sitting between the two   
adults.  
  
Although not patient by nature, Mulder decided to let the old   
lady begin her story in her own time. Mrs. Langmann began   
punching and folding her dough. "So you think the ghost did for   
that poor Herron girl," Mrs. Langmann said at last.  
  
"Some people think so," Mulder said. Mrs. Langmann glanced up at   
Jeff's translation.   
  
"What did she see?" Mrs. Langmann asked.  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
"The girl. Out in the woods -- what did she see?" Mrs. Langmann   
glanced up from her kneading, apparently waiting for Jeff to   
translate Mulder's response.  
  
"I don't know. She died before anyone could ask her." Mulder   
hesitated before bringing Scully into the discussion, but saw no   
way around doing it. He supposed news of her experience would   
have traveled fast, anyway. "A friend of mine saw children, or   
what she believed to be children, during the storm early Sunday   
morning. She said they were bleeding, crying for their mother."  
  
Mulder thought Jeff looked a little uneasy as he translated that   
for Mrs. Langmann. "Ah," the old lady said. "Folks see   
different things, you know. The headless lady gets all the   
attention. I've known people who went out there looking for her;   
they think she's some kind of tourist attraction, I guess. They   
never do see anything but the wind and the rain, and maybe the   
inside of a police car if they get too bold about trespassing.   
That's because the South Road Ghost isn't the kind of ghost you   
can go looking for. It's the kind that comes looking for you."  
  
"Why?" Mulder asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the   
table. "Why would it look for someone?"  
  
Mrs. Langmann glanced up at Jeff and said, "Nobody knows that.   
Nobody living, anyway. I can tell you that it calls those whose   
roots aren't deep in this world, usually folks who have already   
lost more than they can bear. I suppose those people are easy,   
since they're halfway into the next world already."  
  
"I've heard you knew someone who met it," Mulder said.   
  
Jeff translated, and then Mrs. Langmann returned to her kneading   
for so long that Mulder feared she had decided not to answer.   
When she spoke at last, her words seemed like the ramblings of   
the senile. "I went deaf of a fever when I was six," Mrs.   
Langmann continued. "At the time, the only formal education   
available for me was the deaf school on the mainland, but the   
very thought of being sent away terrified me. It terrified my   
mother, too, because I was the only child she had. In the end,   
my parents brought in Miss Emma Stoy to be my tutor.   
  
"Miss Emma was a spinster lady, and a good friend to me until she   
died. She may have saved my life when I was a newly married   
woman. My Edward became terribly sick with the influenza when we   
were six months married. I was just nineteen and very silly. I   
swore to Miss Emma that if Edward died, then I would die too.   
When she heard that, she cried, 'For shame! For shame!'" Mrs.   
Langmann raised her hands from the trough to show the signs Miss   
Emma had made. Her sharp motions appeared to startle Jeff.  
  
The old lady continued, "Then she told me the story of her sister   
Pearl who died. Pearl was born deaf, and Miss Emma learned to   
sign to her from a young age."   
  
Mulder sat very still, listening intently without taking notes,   
which were largely unnecessary for him. Some people found this   
disconcerting, but Mrs. Langmann seemed hardly to notice.  
  
"Pearl went to the very same deaf school I was so anxious to   
avoid, and she hadn't thought much of it. In fact, she was far   
more interested in a certain young Mr. Watkins than she was in   
her studies, so as soon as she could she left school and was   
married. She and her husband set up housekeeping just outside   
Vineyard Haven, and before long they had a little daughter, Rose.   
Pearl adored that child. For a time, she and her husband and   
their little girl were very happy.  
  
"One day when Rose had only just begun to get around well on her   
feet, Pearl left her sleeping in her cradle while she went out to   
hang the wash. While she was gone, the baby fell into the fire.   
Pearl never heard what was going on inside the house; how could   
she? The old dog began running around and around the yard,   
around and around and around until he just crawled under a tree   
and lay still. He heard that baby, all right. But Pearl could   
make nothing of what he was carrying on about." Mrs. Langmann   
continued to beat her dough, her hands moving in a slow, steady   
rhythm.  
  
"She never knew until she smelled smoke and saw flames through   
the window. She ran inside with the wet washing, tried throwing   
everything she could over the fire, but she couldn't find her   
daughter.   
  
"Neighbors finally pulled her out of the house. Nobody could go   
in until after the foundation cooled. In the end, there was   
hardly enough of that child left to bury."  
  
Mulder recalled Samantha and the other children who had all but   
dematerialized. He pressed the crease of his thumb hard against   
the semi-sharp underside of the table's aluminum edging, hoping   
the pain would act as a distraction. This was not a time to   
think of the poor, thin bones pulled from Addie Sparks' shallow   
grave. Not a time to think of the horrors underneath Santa's   
North Pole Village off Route 74 or what Kathy Lee Tencate never   
found of her son, Dean. He straightened up in his chair and   
glanced at Jeff, not quite daring the boy to see something   
besides calm professionalism in his eyes.  
  
Mrs. Langmann continued, "Afterward, Pearl took to her bed.   
Sometimes she told Miss Emma she heard her baby crying for her.   
Since Pearl had never heard a thing in her life, Miss Emma was   
puzzled, and Pearl explained that when she said 'heard' it was   
more like 'felt,' a trembling in the breastbone, like when   
thunder comes." Mrs. Langmann pressed her flour-covered fist   
against her own breastbone.   
  
"One night Pearl went tearing off into the woods near the   
Wesquobsque Cliffs. The local men started a search party, but   
they never found her until morning. Somebody had slashed her   
throat, her face, her hands . . . certain folks thought she'd   
done it to herself in a kind of frenzy, but they never did find   
the knife."  
  
Mulder recalled Scully lying in the emergency room with bandages   
wrapped around the pale skin of her hands. For his sanity's   
sake, he put that image from his mind. "What do you think   
happened?"  
  
Mrs. Langmann barely glanced at Jeff's translation. She replied   
as if she hadn't seen it at all. "Miss Emma got me to understand   
that sometimes, you got to let go. When someone you love is   
going to that other side, you can hold their hand until the last   
moment, but when the time comes, you got to let go. If you   
don't, then they'll take you too. It's not wise to call into   
that dark space beyond, son. Something might hear you. Maybe   
not what you're expecting."  
  
Jeff's hands had fallen into his lap. As if coming to himself,   
he suddenly began to speak and sign at the same time, "You're   
just joshing about something out there hearing you, right, O.G.?   
It's a joke, right?"  
  
Mrs. Langmann didn't answer.  
  
Mulder glanced at the boy and asked, "Hey Jeff, could you get us   
a pen and a piece of paper?"  
  
The kid got up and hurried from the room as if glad for the   
excuse to go. Mulder pulled a pen and a notepad from the inside   
pocket of his coat. He wrote down, "My friend had a daughter who   
died two years ago. Can't have any more children. Afraid it was   
all her fault." He pushed the pen and pad toward Mrs. Langmann.  
  
She scanned his note and asked, "Who says she can't have any   
more?"  
  
Mulder wrote at the bottom of the page, "Doctors."  
  
"Huh." Mrs. Langmann said. That single syllable was apparently   
enough to convey her opinion of doctors.  
  
Once it became clear she would not elaborate, Mulder wrote on a   
fresh page, "How can I help her?"  
  
"Don't leave her alone," Mrs. Langmann said. "If you want to   
protect her, don't leave her alone. If this thing out there   
wants her bad enough, it'll start by tearing her away from her   
friends, her family, her God. Everything that keeps her anchored   
in this world. Alone, a soul is a weak thing, especially a   
grieving soul."  
  
Mulder thought of how Scully had uncharacteristically turned down   
the Sacraments at the church on Sunday morning. "Is this thing   
evil?" he wrote on the notepad.  
  
Mrs. Langmann glanced at it but kept rhythmically punching her   
dough. "Hard to say. Could be mean, spiteful. Could just be   
sad, lost between here and there and looking for company. That's   
the kind of company your friend doesn't need to keep."  
  
Mulder looked down at the paper in his hands, suddenly feeling   
powerless and lost himself. The recollection of Scully standing   
at the window in her filmy nightgown returned to him with an   
unsettling clarity.   
  
Mrs. Langmann continued, "Just don't leave her alone, especially   
not come nightfall. Going to get cold again -- snow, they say."  
  
Mulder shut his eyes, thinking of Scully back in Nye House with   
the long knife and the Kevlar gloves. He decided it was time to   
go back there. Now.  
  
***** 


	14. resurgam14

Scully sat at Tammy Willams' small vanity table, watching the   
pages of her autopsy report churn slowly out of her portable   
printer. The clinical 8" x 10" autopsy photos spread around her   
laptop contrasted bizarrely with the pictures of smiling kids in   
prom night finery tucked into the frame around the mirror.   
  
Her experiments with modeling dough suggested a scenario in which   
Kristie fell forward onto a knife blade held at about the same   
level as the entry-wound. One way to interpret that data was   
to conjecture that the young woman had fallen while pursuing a   
smaller, armed person. If Scully used her knife and a handful of   
Play-Doh to replicate the motion of a person stabbed while   
backing away, she got a different pattern entirely. Such a crude   
experimentation method would never be admissible in court, but   
her results were enough to make her feel a great deal of doubt   
about the prosecution's version of events. McBer's defense   
lawyer would love this. Detective Davis would not be happy at   
all.   
  
Personally, Scully had mixed feelings about her conclusions.   
McBer was without doubt a despicable person who had no reason to   
wish Kristie well. He might even have planned to kill her, and   
what was worse, if he were allowed to go free he might harm   
others.  
  
//Don't think about doing this for him. Think about doing it for   
the truth,// Scully told herself. Then she answered her own   
thought: //Uh-huh. Since when did the truth become a murderous   
drug dealer in a wheelchair?//  
  
Coming up with no answer for that, she sighed and stared at her   
slow portable printer as it churned out pages of her autopsy   
report. Apparently the Bureau considered pathetic printing speed   
to be a Faustian trade-off for the convenience of being able to   
pack the device in a carry-on bag.   
  
Try as she might, she had not been able to shake the depression   
that had settled over her early Sunday morning. She reminded   
herself this was Holy Week -- her mother would be baking egg   
bread and the choir at St. Mary's would be practicing the   
Alleluja Chorus for a triumphal Easter service. Even the thought   
of April sunlight streaming through the church's stained glass   
failed to cheer her. It was as if something inside her had gone   
dead.  
  
Scully watched the printer inch out line after line of text for a   
few more minutes, then got up and walked out into the empty front   
room. The sun shone through the lace curtains and brought out   
rich, amber tones in the polished wood floor. By daylight, the   
woods across the road were stately rather than menacing, their   
branches fringed with pale green leaflets. She groped toward   
Scriptural references that had comforted her in the past: //This   
is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.//   
  
She felt not the slightest lifting of the shroud over her heart.   
St. John of the Cross had written about something like this . . .   
the Dark Night of the Soul. She'd tried unsuccessfully to get   
Mulder to read that book, hoping he would identify with the   
saint, an unfortunate man of integrity who had refused to bow before   
the repressive paranoia of his superiors. Mulder had managed to   
put off reading it for years. She'd privately smiled at him,   
thinking she'd never met a man so desperate not to have a   
conversion experience.   
  
And yet here she was, as blind as Mulder had ever been -- perhaps   
more so. Scully heard the stairs creak beneath a light tread and   
looked up. Leigh was walking down with a basket of folded sheets   
on her hip. The proprietress looked a bit apologetic and said,   
"You got a phone call earlier. It didn't seem urgent, so I   
didn't disturb you."  
  
"Who was it?" Scully asked. Who even knew she was here?  
  
"Patty Herron. She just wanted to know why the police were   
delaying the release of Kristie's body. She said that as far as   
she knew, you'd completed the autopsy Saturday."  
  
There was only one reason for Davis to delay the release of   
Kristie's body. He was going over Scully's head and having the   
autopsy redone. //"I don't want this to be repeat of   
the LaPierre case,"// he'd said. Scully gave Leigh a smile that   
was probably as brittle as glass and said, "I'm afraid she'll   
have to ask Detective Davis that question."  
  
Leigh looked puzzled, but before she could reply Scully turned   
and walked out outside. The afternoon was cool but clear,   
beautiful except for the angry singing in her ears. She'd seen   
skepticism of her conclusions before. Other pathologists had   
reviewed her test results, and victims' families had challenged   
her conclusions. That came with the territory and was only to be   
expected. But this was the first time a state agency had   
withheld remains from a grieving family expressly to recheck her   
work.   
  
She strode around to the back of the house, where she dropped   
down into a mostly dry slat-seated bench swing with a view of the   
woods beyond the meadow. Somewhere, a woodpecker knocked on a   
tree. Scully bent forward and rested her forehead in her hands,   
trying to hold onto her rage and sense of injury. Anger was   
lively, and lively was good.   
  
The feeling soon drained away, just the same. What did it matter   
whether Scully's colleagues respected her, or when Kristie's body   
would be released, or if her autopsy report ever saw the light of   
day? Scully's story would one day end just like everyone else's:   
beneath a tilted headstone in a weed-choked graveyard.  
  
A bird splashed in the garden's cement birdbath, and Scully   
looked up. The little creature cocked its head to one side and   
gazed at her with eyes as shiny and dark as beads. "You want to   
trade places?" she asked. "I'll be the little bird and you be   
the FBI agent with a career circling the drain." The bird   
cheeped at her, fluttered its wings, and flew away.  
  
"That's what I thought," Scully said.  
  
She sat looking toward the woods beyond the meadow until she   
became chilled and drew the lapels of her jacket closer across   
her chest. The wind was steadily growing colder, bearing the   
first hint of snow.  
  
*****  
  
Mulder drove well in excess of the speed limit over the   
washboarded up-island roads, though he knew his FBI badge   
wouldn't be a get-out-of-ticket-free card here on the Vineyard.  
  
//"Don't leave her alone,"// Mrs. Langmann had said.  
  
He pulled into Nye House's driveway amid a spray of mud and   
gravel, then ran up the slightly-cockeyed wooden steps. The   
front room was sunny, silent and empty.   
  
When he opened the door to Tammy's old room, he found Scully's   
printer running, but Scully herself gone. Her purse was still   
slung by its strap over the back of the white-painted vanity   
chair. A brief check of the Williams family's quarters turned up   
no one.   
  
Mulder headed back outside again, afraid to find Scully in the   
old graveyard, crouching by the tombstones -- or worse, to be   
unable to find her at all. But as he rounded the corner of the   
house he saw her sitting on an old swing bench, rocking herself   
absently as she gazed out at the woods. After a moment, his panic   
subsided.   
  
The swing's chains creaked in a soothing rhythm as he walked up   
beside her. The brisk spring wind had reddened her cheeks and   
blown her hair until it resembled tufts of copper-colored prairie   
grass framing her face. He dropped down onto the seat next to   
her. "Don't go," he said. He wasn't sure if it was his words or   
simply the squeak of the overhead swing hooks that caused her to   
look over at him.  
  
She blinked as if awakened from a dream. "What? Mulder, what   
are you talking about?"   
  
"I saw the old lady Irv told you about," he said, digging the   
notes he'd made at the Historical Society from his pants pocket.   
For himself, he didn't really need such notes, but long   
partnership with Scully had taught him that she liked to have   
data she could hold in her hand.  
  
As he explained what he'd learned, she gazed down at the   
scribbled notes he'd given her. When she repeated the name of   
Capt. Brown's oldest child, "Susannah," the distance in her eyes   
chilled him.  
  
"Scully . . . you can't help them," Mulder said. "Whenever they   
needed -- or need -- you can't give it to them." When she didn't   
reply, he pressed, "They're not Emily. Scully, you don't owe   
them anything." He could hear the edge of fear in his voice.  
  
"You don't understand," she said softly.   
  
Mulder's frustration was so great that he had to get up and pace   
across the muddy, brown lawn. "I understand," he said. He   
understood completely, and that was what scared him. He had been   
willing to give up everything for Samantha, and he was selfish   
enough to hope that Scully wasn't willing to do the same for her   
lost daughter. "I understand that you think they need something   
from you."   
  
The corners of her mouth tensed as if in mild exasperation, but   
she did not reply. Mrs. Langmann's words came back to him--   
//"It's not the kind of ghost you can look for. It's the kind of   
ghost that comes looking for you."//   
  
"No," he said, comprehension slowly dawning. "They don't need   
something from you. You need something from them."   
  
"You're not making any sense at all," she said. The look of   
annoyance on her face was at least a sign of life.   
  
Having found a plausible theory, he was unwilling to let it go.   
"Folklore is full of stories about ghost children who come back   
to haunt their parents. In Scandinavia they call them Utburds,   
in Russia they're Navky. These are kids who died nameless or at   
the hands of their parents. We always assume they come forward   
in time with us, still calling for the help and attention they   
never got. What if that's not true? What if there's something   
inside us that stays back with them? Maybe guilt and grief keep   
us from letting go of these children and lead us backward in   
time. Perhaps some people are so wounded that they don't have   
the will to return to the present."  
  
Scully's expression approximated her old look of wry skepticism.   
"Mulder, that's insane," she said. "Time does not go backward,   
no matter how much we want it to. That's the whole problem --   
that's why people grieve. The Second Law of Thermodynamics . .   
."  
  
Mulder waved away her explanation. "You're thinking of going out   
there again, aren't you?"  
  
She cut her speech on thermodynamics short, as if his words   
surprised her.  
  
Mulder believed he knew her true thoughts, even if she wouldn't   
admit them to herself. After all, he'd had similar, secret hopes   
for years. "You think those entities have something you need,   
and you'll keep going out to them until you find it. Fine.   
Fine, go ahead, I have no right to stop you." He sat down next   
her, weary from anxiety and lack of rest. "Just take me with   
you. Mrs. Langmann said that the most dangerous thing for you   
was to be alone right now. She said that this thing will try to   
call you away from everyone who loves you."  
  
Scully met his eyes as he said the last words, and then she   
looked away toward the trees. After a moment that felt like   
hours, she released a long breath. "Yes," she said.   
"Come with me."  
  
*****  
  
Mulder drove with Scully to town, where they picked up flares,   
flashlight batteries, and knit gloves to cover Scully's injured   
hands. If the store's gray-bearded proprietor was interested in   
any of their purchases, he didn't show it. Neither did Scully,   
who wandered through the aisles like a woman lost in thought.  
  
Mulder was encouraged when she wanted to stop by the church on   
the way back, although she asked him to wait in the car and   
wouldn't tell him what she went in for. As she returned, Mulder   
scanned her face for some sign of inner peace, or resignation, or   
anything at all that would give him a view into her world and   
leave him feeling less shut out.   
  
Cold air came in with her when she opened the car door. She did   
not meet his gaze, and instead looked out into some middle   
distance as she groped for her shoulder belt. Her manner was not   
cruel; it was only as if she were alone.   
  
It was almost full dark by the time their car bobbed its way into   
Nye House's rutted driveway. Pellets of sleet bounced off the   
windshield and formed a swarm that coursed through the headlight   
beams. Mulder pulled into the near-empty gravel lot and shut the   
car off. Beside him, Scully was drawing on her new knit gloves   
over her protective Kevlar ones. Something about her   
businesslike eagerness unnerved him.   
  
Mulder considered turning around and driving back to Vineyard   
Haven. Two more ferries would run back to the mainland tonight,   
and he could have Scully safe in Boston by midnight, whether she   
was a willing traveler or not.   
  
He sat with both hands resting on the steering wheel while the   
cooling engine block ticked. As Scully pocketed extra batteries   
and ejected the magazine of her gun to examine it, Mulder looked   
down at the ignition key. What would happen if he hauled her out   
of here against her will? Perhaps she would forgive him in time;   
perhaps she would even agree it was the right thing to do.   
  
But he suspected she'd come back. And she'd come back alone, no   
longer trusting him to accompany her. Mulder's hands slid to the   
bottom of the steering wheel. "This is payback time for the   
Bermuda Triangle, isn't it?" he asked.  
  
"Of course not." She finished checking her equipment and opened   
the car door. "Are you coming?" she asked.   
  
Not knowing what else to do, he unfolded himself from the   
confines of the car and stepped outside, where a layer of fallen   
ice crystals crunched beneath his feet. He made sure his own 9   
mm was securely clipped to the waistband of his jeans. He   
doubted it would do any good to shoot at the beings that waited   
out there, but he felt better armed.   
  
"Let's go," he said.   
  
Side by side, they walked away from the inn's circle of light,   
toward the silver-gray expanse of the frozen field. For a time   
the only sounds were their footsteps and the faint tapping of the   
sleet falling all around, like a skeleton rain.  
  
Mulder repressed his urge to lead her toward the bike path that   
was an easier, more roundabout way into the woods. Scully seemed   
certain of the path she wanted to take, and he followed her lead.   
  
The terrain began to drop as they entered the trees. They were   
descending into a valley cut by millennia-worth of spring runoff   
water, and he knew the soil would grow softer and more   
treacherous as they neared the bottom. Yet Scully descended the   
steep slope with confident speed, and it was Mulder who skidded   
in the leaf-choked mud while struggling to keep up with her. He   
swore under his breath as he found he could not keep an eye on   
her and his footing at the same time.  
  
She stopped briefly about midway down the steepest part of the   
slope, her foot braced against the semi-exposed roots of a small   
maple. "This is where I heard it," she said as he caught up with   
her.  
  
Mulder stopped and listened. The sleet continued to patter down,   
and every so often, last year's dead leaves would stir in the   
wind, making a wild, rushing sound. But that was all. "You hear   
it now?" he asked.  
  
She hesitated, then said, "No." Scully continued down the slope,   
with Mulder laboring in her wake.   
  
The valley had not changed much since his boyhood. If he   
remembered correctly, this pocket of land was entrusted to the   
Dukes County Historical Society and forbidden to developers.   
Still, he did not recall the wet black trees being this tangled   
and thick, or the sting of the sea air this fierce. He had the   
strange sense of walking on a parallel Vineyard, a wild,   
thicketed island where whalers had never come and no wealthy   
mainlanders visited.  
  
He continued to follow as Scully picked her way among the low-  
hanging branches and the juniper canes. They passed the tiny   
cemetery on the right, and Mulder was somewhat relieved to see   
the space between its tilted stones was silent and empty.   
  
A few dozen yards further on, the old house foundation came into   
view. Even in the semi-darkness of the ice-filled night, the   
stone base could be seen as a collection of dark lines lying   
among the ice-coated weeds. "So what now?" Mulder asked,   
turning to Scully.  
  
He was alone.   
  
Looking back, he saw that his own footprints were the only track   
visible for a long way.  
  
****  
  
Once again, Scully stood at the edge of the clearing that   
surrounded the small house. Moonlight shone down upon the snow   
and turned the house's weathered shingling to muted silver. In   
the deep shadow by its side, two small, pale figures huddled.  
  
"I came back," Scully said. Somehow, the temperature seemed less   
bitter than a moment ago. The infant's gasps were as dreadful as   
she remembered, and ambient moonlight reflected as pale pinpoints   
in the older child's eyes.   
  
"Did you think I forgot you?" Scully asked. The snow crunched   
softly under her feet as she walked closer.  
  
The girl made a quiet sound, like the cry of a wounded bird.   
Scully held her hand out to the child, ready this time for the   
slight shifting of the cloth over her hand.  
  
The knife flashed up from beneath the fabric folds, and Scully   
caught the blade in the V between her forefinger and thumb. The   
impact made her wince although her Kevlar gloves protected her   
hand from the edge.   
  
The child's strength was tremendous, and Scully found herself   
struggling to keep the blade pushed down and away. Her breathing   
sounded loud in the still air.  
  
"She left us," the girl said at last. Her speech had such an   
odd, flat sound, not any American accent Scully was familiar   
with, and yet no European accent either.  
  
"I know. I'm sorry," Scully managed. The exertion caused her to   
take deep breaths, and the air was thick with the smell of blood.   
  
If fighting against Scully was any struggle for the girl, she   
didn't show it. Her bloodied face was calm, her gray eyes clear   
as late winter ice. "She left us. But you won't."  
  
"No," Scully said. "No, I won't leave you." The terrible   
pressure on the blade began to subside, and the girl let it drop   
into the blood-spattered snow. "Susannah," Scully whispered.  
  
This time, the child did not resist as Scully gathered her and   
the infant into her arms. Their skin was so cold -- colder than   
the surrounding air, but they curled close and did not pull away.   
Scully sat in the snow with her back against the house's wall,   
both children lying in her lap.  
  
*****  
  
Retracing his steps, Mulder discovered Scully's track in the new-  
fallen sleet not far from the graveyard. She had walked into a   
small thicket, but there her prints became muddled and seemed to   
disappear.   
  
He began searching in a spiral pattern outward from the thicket.   
He was sure that less than five minutes had passed since he last   
saw her ahead of him, not nearly long enough for her to travel   
out of earshot. Any yet, even when he called her name so loudly   
it echoed off the valley wall, he received no reply. He tried not  
to think about the black-and-red clay cliffs rising hundreds of   
feet from the surf less than half a mile from where he stood.   
  
Sweeping his flashlight beam over the ground revealed nothing of   
use. The weeds of the forest floor all had delicate straws of   
ice hanging from them, obviously undisturbed for days.   
  
It was as if Scully had simply vanished off the face of the   
earth. Mulder had a nightmare sense of history repeating itself.   
His spiral searching pattern grew more oblong than circular,   
stretching toward the South Road Burying Ground and the ruined   
house. Such a small patch of land. Scully would be there; she   
had to be.  
  
She was not. Flashes of what increasingly seemed like   
desperation rather than intuition led him from the graveyard to   
the house foundations and back again. Each time he reached one   
location and found it empty, he would become sure that Scully   
waited for him in the other, safe and probably irritated with him   
for wandering off. Each time, he was disappointed.   
  
Before long his footprints had stitched a great zigzag pattern   
between cemetery and house, obliterating any traces Scully might   
have left. When it sunk in that his "search" was only pacing   
that did more harm than good, he stopped by a tree near the stone   
foundations and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his   
eyes.   
  
There was no reason to panic. He had only failed to find Scully   
because he had not yet looked in the place she was at. Every   
time he looked somewhere and did not find her, he narrowed his   
search. He was a good searcher; he'd made his career at the FBI   
by finding things no one else could.  
  
Yet he had never found the things he wanted most. One by one,   
the objects of his quests had all slipped beyond his reach.   
  
He shouted for his partner before the terror creeping up on him   
could truly take hold. "Scully!"   
  
Though it felt good to release his nervous energy, calling her   
was no more effective than before. He began pacing again,   
circling the stone foundations this time. He had to move in   
order to think. Ghosts had motives like anybody else, and   
therefore their behavior should be predictable within certain   
limits. Days ago, Scully had categorized the paranormal events   
here as a Revenge Haunting, dismissing the differential category   
of Reenactment Haunting for somewhat arbitrary reasons. Properly   
speaking, the situation had characteristics of both types. The   
entities Scully had discovered were filled with rage, and yet the   
object of their rage was inaccessible to them.  
  
//Join the club.//   
  
The creatures that haunted this area needed a specific type of   
person to play the opposing role in their drama -- a wounded   
person with loose ties to the world of the living, a mother whose   
spirit had nearly followed her child's into the other world.   
How could he get such an entity to look for him? As a   
childless man, he was far from its preferred victim.   
  
So many times, he had drawn killers out by simply seeming   
interested in them, appealing to their vanity. Perhaps   
reenactment haunting, like some reenactment killings, was a   
performance art whose creators craved an audience.  
  
Mulder called out, "Susannah!"  
  
Half-frozen branches clacked in the wind, sending down a new   
scattering of sleet, then all grew quiet. A strange, listening   
silence followed while the name seemed to hang in the air. Mulder   
had the maddening feeling that the ghost's world lay behind a   
thin veil, and if he only knew where to place his hand, he could   
draw it aside and step through.   
  
The sense of being trapped between worlds was eerily familiar,   
and he remembered that he carried a portal to the past within his   
head -- the faulty synaptic connection that would periodically   
rip him out of his everyday reality. Could he induce a seizure?   
He'd never tried, but here, of all places, it should be possible.   
Mulder shut his eyes, and the thudding of his heart seemed   
louder. Clammy sweat had accumulated on his upper lip and he   
wiped it off with his fingers.  
  
How did his seizures begin? Usually with a powerful emotion in a   
familiar place. Concentrating, he thought about climbing the   
gray willow to drop maple-seed helicopters as a child . . . or   
being a teenager hunkering down among the tilted headstones in   
the muggy August heat, hating the town that had rejected him.   
But none of the memories he conjured up produced the strange   
sense of dislocation in time.   
  
"Fuck Irv," he whispered. "Fuck him and his South Road Ghost."   
If only the little shit hadn't been so eager to upset Scully with   
his ugly stories of lost children and poisoned cats --  
  
The terrible sensation came over him of falling against a solid   
barrier and passing straight through.  
  
He was eleven years old, curled against the side of his bed,   
crying.   
  
His mother had beaten him.  
  
He was crying for his mother.  
  
Samantha, loyal in her own way, had to be removed from his   
doorway in order to keep her from coming to him, but it wasn't   
her he wanted.   
  
His mother had been cruel to him.  
  
He needed his mother.  
  
The pain of his tightened throat intruded on the vision, and it   
soon dissolved around him. Mulder grabbed a tree for support and   
rested his forehead against the coolness of the bark. As usual,   
the seizure's aftermath left him nauseated and gagging, and he   
shut his eyes against the dizziness.  
  
//This is not helping her.// Grief and illness had left him too   
weak to be the rescuer Scully needed. He groped in the deep   
pocket of his coat for the flares he'd brought. Maybe he could   
draw a rescue party. And yet, he knew that men with flashlights   
and two-way radios were not enough to save her. Fighting   
sickness, he bargained with any power that could hear. //Leave   
her alone. You can have me instead. I'm the one who drilled a   
hole in my own head. I deserve to be taken -- she doesn't.//  
  
Slowly, became aware that it was not only the seizure making him   
ill. There was also a smell -- one he'd learned to identify far   
later than age eleven.   
  
It was blood.  
  
The image of Kristie Herron lying on the autopsy table flashed in   
his mind. But the moment he opened his eyes, the smell of blood   
faded. He was all alone in the ordinary woods.   
  
Mulder took a step away from the tree, holding an unlit flare in   
his hand. "What do you want?" he shouted at the thing that slunk   
among the stones out here, waiting to take unhappy young women   
away. "How many people have to die before you're satisfied?"  
  
The dry, clinical profiler voice that had guided him through   
thousands of investigations told him: //You know what they   
want.//  
  
Mary Brown's daughters had died waiting for their mother. She'd   
killed them, and yet they waited. The two centuries' worth of   
rage they carried was eclipsed by their need.   
  
If Mulder could not get into the ghosts' world by stepping into   
Mary Brown's place, perhaps he could get there by stepping into   
Susannah's. He called the child's name again, seeking the   
vision-place where the present and past ran together. As before,   
the wind swirled fiercely, and Mulder could almost hear angry   
denial in the sound: //"Go away,"// it seemed to say. //"She's   
ours now."//   
  
When the wind died again, the otherworldly sense faded with it.   
These were the woods of his childhood -- dark, eerie, but   
essentially familiar. Perhaps for once, familiarity was too   
great an anchor to the everyday world. It could be that he knew   
the stone house foundation, the woods, and the graveyard so well   
that they kept him from seeing what was truly there. After   
hesitating a moment, Mulder shut his flashlight off and put it   
and the flare away.   
  
The icy night's diffuse luminance seemed to have vanished. He   
was in utter darkness, and he felt a powerful urge not to move.   
Motion would cause noise, and that would bring . . . something.   
He was certain that something was near, watching him with empty   
holes in a pale, dry face.  
  
Mulder stood motionless, his chest feeling almost too tight to   
breathe, while he waited for the thing to make some noise and   
betray itself.   
  
When his eyes began to adjust to the scant light, the thick   
shadows resolved once again to the shapes of old logs and briar   
bushes. His fear faded.  
  
But there *had* been something there. With dull dread, he   
thought the key might be blindness. There were apparently only   
two doors to the cold, bloody world that Scully had slipped into.   
One was for mothers driven half mad by grief. The other one, the   
little, cramped door, was for dying things. Susannah and her   
sister had entered through that door, clawing against it like   
wounded animals in their terror and desperation. Perhaps Kristie   
and the other dead women had drifted out if it on their way to   
the next world.   
  
If Mulder truly wanted to enter Susannah's reality, he would have   
to force his way through that little door by becoming as helpless   
as the dying, as frightened as an abandoned child. His throat   
felt very dry as he swallowed.   
  
His cell phone was inside his inner coat pocket. He could call   
Joe up, have him bring his officers out to search the place   
properly. And when dawn came, they would find Scully's body   
curled in some icy hollow, or smashed at the foot of the cliffs.  
  
Mulder closed his eyes. The smell of blood returned, and grew   
stronger. Once again, he became sure he was being watched.  
  
An mournful baying sounded in the near distance. He jumped, then   
identified the sound as the cry of a wolf. Whatever lay bleeding   
nearby was attracting a beast that had been extinct on the   
Vineyard for over 150 years.   
  
Mulder cupped his hands around his mouth and called, "Scully!"   
  
He heard a strange, shuffling half-step a few yards to his right.   
His eyes snapped open involuntarily as he turned. In his   
peripheral vision he glimpsed a silvery-gray wall, and beyond   
that a pale figure that swayed as if its forward momentum had   
been abruptly checked.  
  
Once he faced the thing directly, it was gone. He was alone   
again by the foundations of the long-ruined house. The freezing   
wind turned the sweat on his face and throat into icy droplets.   
  
//Shit. Holy shit.//  
  
He recalled the horror stories he used to tell Joey Luce about   
the things that lurked deep in the woods. At each gristly   
detail, Joey's eyes would get bigger and bigger . . .  
  
//That's crap. You know these woods. You know the paranormal.   
Nine times out of ten, ghosts are only dangerous if you're afraid   
of them.//  
  
But he was afraid. There had been something wrong about the pale   
thing standing by the wall. Its lower portion had swung like   
sodden curtains, yet the upper part seemed to freeze motionless   
too quickly for the energy of that swinging, dragging fabric. It   
was as if a mannequin had been filmed walking in stop-motion   
while its clothes continued to flow in liquid real time.  
  
Mulder had no desire at all to close his eyes again. //You have   
to. Think about Scully.// Scully in his Knicks shirt and   
pajama bottoms, curled on his couch on a sunny Saturday morning.   
Scully gently waking him from his nightmares, taking away the   
worst of the terror and grief. He shut his eyes and called his   
partner again.   
  
He heard no sound but the rushing noise of the wind for some   
time, and then the shuffling step came again, nearer this time.   
Mulder struggled to sweep away the coat folds that covered his   
gun. He drew it and took a triangular stance against the thing   
that moved toward him, only to strike a solid wall with his foot   
and lose his balance. He fell against a hard, knobby surface.   
When he lifted his hand to touch it, it felt like the jutting   
wooden panels of an old, shake-sided house.   
//This is it. This is the structure Scully saw.//  
  
The thing to his right shuffled nearer, and Mulder backed away,   
keeping his unarmed hand against the wall for guidance. His   
fingers brushed a corner and he turned it, relieved to be out of   
the shuffling thing's line of sight, if indeed it could see. The   
smell of blood was strong now, and as he backed away, eyes shut,   
he feared putting his foot down on something wet and cold, with   
stiffening hands and an awesome grip.  
  
*****  
  
Scully huddled against the rough-hewn shingles with both children   
in her lap. The air around her seemed to grow milder, even warm,   
and she shrugged out of her coat, easing the plastic bottle from   
its inner pocket before wrapping the garment like a blanket   
around the wounded girls. She had filled the screw-cap soda   
bottle with holy water from the church's baptismal font.   
Catholic doctrine forbade baptism of the dead, but how could she   
call these children dead, when they gasped for breath in her   
arms? Awkwardly, she poured some of the water into her cupped   
hand. The liquid felt as warm as bathwater. Nestled against her   
shoulder, Susannah gazed at her activities with calm uninterest.  
  
As she had once been taught to do by Sister Mary, Scully   
administered the only Sacrament permissible for a lay Catholic to   
perform in cases of emergency. Splashing the dying infant's head   
with water of three times, she said, "I baptize you, Maria, in   
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." She'd   
chosen the name after some deliberation. It was the name of an   
Italian child who'd converted her own murderer on her deathbed,   
and who had become an unofficial patron saint of wronged girls.  
  
Having no idea of the religious practices of Susannah's family,   
she refilled her cupped hand with water and recited an alternate   
prayer for the older girl, "If you have not already been   
baptized, I baptize you, Susannah, in the name of the Father, and   
the Son, and the Holy Spirit."   
  
The holy water made rivulets in the blood on the girls' faces,   
but had no other obvious effect. Scully shut her eyes and   
released a long breath. She had no idea what else to do for   
them, and she was so tired.   
  
***** 


	15. resurgam15

Mulder continued to back away along the wall, away from the thing   
that shuffled after him. His fingers traced the openings of a   
door and small-paned windows, once, then twice. He'd circled the   
entire building, and Scully was not there.   
  
The fear crept upon him that he was in the wrong spirit world --   
the one in which Mary Brown wandered the cliffs with her head   
held high like a lantern, eternally separated from her daughters.   
The wolves' cries had grown increasingly close and then stopped   
altogether. Every so often now, he heard a light footfall off in   
the trees. The knowledge that wolf packs, even if starving,   
almost never attacked adult humans was scant comfort. Mulder   
supposed everything was starving during the winter of 1777. Even   
if he managed to shoot one of the animals with his eyes shut,   
would it fall? He doubted that any amount of firepower would   
stop the pale, shambling thing that followed him.  
  
He turned a corner to the shorter side of the rectangular   
building, and heard a soft tick along the front as if his pursuer   
were brushing frost-hardened fingers against the window panes,   
following him by touch even as he backed away by touch.  
  
Mulder heard snow-covered leaves crunch under his feet as he   
struggled to keep the house between himself and whatever flaking,   
limping nightmare crept after him. "Scully!" he shouted, for the   
dozenth time.  
  
This time he got a response -- "Fox?"  
  
It was his mother's voice.  
  
He stopped in his tracks, his mouth suddenly dry. He nearly   
called out, "Mom?" But the word died on his lips. He stood   
still as the slow footsteps rounded the side of the house. Was   
it his imagination, or did they seem steadier, less stiff, then   
they had before?  
  
He heard the slow drag of something, fabric, pulling around the   
corner. His mother's voice said again, "Fox?" It was a gentle,   
welcoming voice.  
  
He had railed at a God he did not believe in for not giving him   
more time with her -- time to ask questions, to say goodbye. Was   
this the answer to his unacknowledged prayer? He stretched out   
his hand, then hesitated. Would his fingers contact the soft   
warmth of his mother's body, or flesh as hard and stiff as   
cracked leather?  
  
He remained still, listening to the crunch of icy leaves as the   
footsteps drew closer. The sounds stopped about an arm's length   
away, and he felt something cold in front of him. Waves of chill   
came over his outstretched hand as if he held it next to a block   
of ice.   
  
He was sure that if he reached out any farther he would touch   
fingers, a wrist, an arm. His breaths came in ragged gasps and   
cold air burned in his lungs. He wanted the gentle touch he   
remembered, wanted to hear his mother say his name.   
If this was not what he had prayed for, how badly did he want the   
approximation? Something heavy and damp, like waterlogged   
fabric, brushed against his ankle.  
  
Not that badly.  
  
He backed away, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. If   
Scully could see into this world at all, perhaps the beam would   
draw her. He kept his arm against the house's wall as he   
continued moving away from the stumbling thing with his mother's   
voice. Its footsteps continued after him, surer now, as he spoke   
out loud to someone -- perhaps Scully, perhaps Susannah, perhaps   
himself.  
  
"She can't come to you here. It's no good waiting anymore -- you   
have to move on. You have to get up and move."  
  
As before, the only reply was the shuffling footsteps that   
followed him.  
  
*****  
  
Scully sat in a sunlit field with Emily, Susannah, and the infant   
she'd named Maria. All three little girls were pink and healthy   
as they played in the long grass. In daylight, Susannah's hair   
was the color of straw, and Emily's eyes had a lively sparkle   
that Scully had never before seen in her. Both girls giggled as   
Susannah showed Emily how to make play teacups out of scoop-  
shaped leaves.  
  
Scully sat in a loose T-shirt and shorts, her confining FBI   
clothes shed like a rusty suit of armor. This was what she had   
wanted all along. Not recognition, not approval, not even the   
"answers" that neither science nor religion had ever wholly   
provided. She only wanted to *be,* on her own terms, for herself   
and those she loved.   
  
With wide-eyed fascination, baby Maria reached up and grabbed a   
strand of Scully's hair in her small, chubby fist.  
  
Then the sweet moment was spoiled by a man's urgent voice: "You   
have to get up and move."   
  
For an instant, fear lanced through her. She had forgotten   
something important -- something terrible. She struggled to   
remember, though she sensed whatever it was would destroy her   
happiness.  
  
The truth came slowly, like the door to a crypt swinging open.   
Someone was dead. A wave of lightheadedness came over her. Who?   
Who was dead?   
  
Memories came crashing down one after another. Her father . . .?   
*Yes.* Her sister? *Yes.* Her daughter?  
  
On the verge of an anguished cry, Scully looked down and saw   
Emily gazing up at her with puzzled, sea-blue eyes.   
  
The horror began to fade. How could Emily be dead when she was   
here, playing in the grass? Susannah tugged at Scully's sleeve,   
seeming impatient with her older playmate's foolish imaginings.   
Scully turned her attention to the children again, somewhat   
disoriented from the shock.   
  
The distress soon passed, and she was engrossed in the children's   
game again. Susannah smiled up at her impishly as she poured   
dewdrop "tea" into Emily's leaf cup. The baby cooed and batted   
at strands of Scully's hair.  
  
Quiet and peace returned, until the same male voice distracted   
her. "Follow the light if you can see it, Scully. You can't   
stay here." Hearing fear in that voice triggered old reflexes.   
She moved to grasp for something at the small of her back -- her   
gun.  
  
No. She didn't carry a gun anymore. *She did.* She distinctly   
remembered cleaning and re-loading it before she --  
  
Images tumbled through her mind: the inn; the hospital; the   
tender sorrow on Mulder's face as he stood by the autopsy table   
in Boston.  
  
"Mulder?" she asked. The reality around her blurred and   
dissolved like a chalk drawing in the rain.   
  
Numbing cold struck her and she struggled to rise, bewildered by   
the sensation of lying face down in a cold, wet pool. "Mulder .   
. ." Saying his name required enormous effort this time. Had she   
only thought she called him before?  
  
She forced her eyes open. The sunny field was nowhere to be seen   
-- all around was dark. Scully lay in a sleety patch of mud   
without her coat on, her left hand soaked in a puddle of spilled   
holy water. Her limbs barely obeyed her as she tried to push   
herself up onto her knees.   
  
She lifted her head and felt the frozen tips of her hair drag   
against her throat and jaw. She squinted through the darkness,   
disoriented, and thought she glimpsed a light through the trees   
ahead. She began to crawl toward it.  
  
A cold hand caught her arm, bringing her up short. Scully looked   
down and saw eyes, round eyes in shining in a small, pale face.   
She had no sense of the mouth moving as the soft voice spoke --   
in fact, the lower jaw seemed to have fallen away.  
"She left us. Don't leave us, too."  
  
Puzzled by the creature's powerful grip, Scully placed her hand   
over the tiny forearm, trying to pull it away. There was bone   
beneath the tattered fabric. "You're death," she murmured. This   
was the part of her dream that she had not wanted to acknowledge.   
This was what the secret thing she had longed for -- a guide to   
the other world where her own child waited. "You've come for   
me."   
  
The sound of Mulder calling her name seemed to grow more distant.   
  
Gazing into the small being's eyes, she saw an invitation to come   
away into the unknown. There would be no more pain, no more   
fear. She had only everything to lose, and compared to what she   
had already lost, what was everything? She reached up, brushed   
her fingertips against the twine-like strands of hair.  
  
"Follow the light if you can see it!" Mulder called.   
  
Mulder. She looked up, saw a flash of light among the black   
tangle of the trees. He would be all right without her, she told   
herself.  
  
*He wouldn't.*   
  
If anything, his losses had been greater than her own. She   
remembered his dull, shocked manner at his mother's funeral.   
What would happen to him if her lost her as well?   
  
And what would happen to her, without her friend, her gadfly and   
protector? What would the afterlife be without Mulder there,   
alternately mocking and spinning theories?  
  
"It's not time," Scully said, gently pushing the creature at her   
side away. It cried out like a stricken thing, and she felt its   
bony hands catch at her arm. "I'm sorry. It's not time."   
  
She dragged herself through the icy mud, though the effort was as   
wearying as swimming through tar. Her hand brushed rough stone,   
and she heaved herself over the block, rolling down the other   
side with the thing still clutching at her. She was so close   
now, only a few yards away from the light. She rolled a few more   
feet, then lay exhausted.   
  
The dead creature, an Utburd, Mulder had called it, a Navky,   
crept up on top of her chest and gazed down at her. The   
expression on its ruined face was not one of hate but of terrible   
longing. "Mulder . . ." Scully called weakly. "Mulder."  
  
*****  
  
"Mulder."   
  
Mulder hesitated as the dead woman's footsteps continued to draw   
closer. Was this another trick? First his mother's voice and   
now Scully's . . .   
  
"Mulder," the voice came again, very desperate. He felt he   
couldn't take the chance of not responding.  
  
"Scully!" he called.   
  
The response was a rustle of leaves in a direction he hadn't   
heard before -- directly to his left, within the confines of the   
ghost house. He turned the beam of his flashlight and dared to   
open his eyes.  
  
Scully lay on her back at the center of the rectangle of stone.   
A long shadow lay across her body. Mulder could make out the   
bell-shape of a long skirt, a nipped-in waist, angular   
shoulders, and above that, nothing.   
  
He flicked the light toward the figure, and stepped back from the   
sight of -- what? The thing was gone -- his flashlight beam   
illuminated only trees.   
  
Had he only imagined the elongated, gray object held up in a   
withered hand? It had been something too stretched-out to   
be a human head, unless death had knocked the jawbone loose from   
its moorings and then pulled leather-like skin down with it.  
He did not feel it was best to think about that particular   
extreme possibility. Instead, he ran to Scully's side, lifting   
her from the sleet-covered mud. She twisted the folds of his   
coat in her gloved fingers, but did not open her eyes. Mulder   
rested his cheek against her forehead and brushed ice crystals   
from her hair.   
  
Once Scully was steady enough to stand, he slipped his arm around   
her waist and helped her walk. They left behind the house   
foundations and standing stones, traveling toward the lights of   
the waiting inn.  
  
*****  
  
Later, Mulder sat on a chair next to his bed in Nye House,   
watching Scully sleep. Her hair was still dark with dampness,   
and he gently brushed it away from her forehead.   
  
Joe's sister Cheryl turned the lamp down to its lowest setting   
and began putting her thermometer and blood pressure cuff back   
into what she'd referred to as her "bag of tricks." Cheryl had   
agreed to stop by on the way home from her second-shift nursing   
assignment.  
  
"She should be all right," Cheryl said. "If she seems worse   
during the night -- groggy or disoriented, take her over to the   
hospital."  
  
"Thank you," Mulder said.   
  
As Cheryl finished packing up her belongings, she asked, "Fox . .   
. what did you see out there?"   
  
Mulder looked up at her. She had grown up to be a tallish woman,   
a little heavy around the hips, but pleasant-looking with her   
short auburn curls and wide-set dark eyes. "Nothing," he said   
truthfully.  
  
Cheryl looked up at him. "Nothing?" she echoed. He could   
understand the edge of disapproval in her voice. Nobody wanted   
to hear their town had been turned upside-down by "nothing."  
  
"Cheryl . . . ." He rubbed at the old bullet wound in his   
shoulder, buying time to think as much as massaging away a dull   
ache that sometimes set in with the cold. "What if I said that   
sometimes the dead have more control over our lives than they   
should?"  
  
Her face seemed to close off from him, as if her thoughts were   
very private. He supposed the dead father she'd never known had   
cast a long shadow over her life. "Ghosts. You think it was   
ghosts," she said.  
  
He almost gave her a foolishly equivocal answer about how there   
were many kinds of ghosts, not all of them paranormal. Instead,   
he told her the unvarnished truth. "Yes."  
  
She zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder, not meeting   
his eyes. "What should I tell Mark and Patty?'  
  
It was a good question. Mulder seldom had to live with the   
fallout of the paranormal bombshells he dropped into people's   
lives. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I   
don't know. Tell them that it doesn't matter what I think. Tell   
them I'm nuts. Just --" Mrs. Langmann's words came back to him.   
"Just don't leave them alone."  
  
Her face retained its shielded expression, but she nodded.   
  
He continued quickly before he lost the will to say what he   
needed to say next. "Listen -- Cheryl, I never did sell that   
place of my dad's."   
  
She gave him a curious look. "I always assumed that meant you   
planned on moving back with us someday."  
  
He shook his head. His official excuse for not selling the   
house, other than procrastination, was that there might be   
secrets hidden among his father's things. But Bill Mulder's   
former associates had had seven years to comb the place for   
anything they didn't want his son to find. The reality was that   
despite the terrible memories he had of that house, he had not   
been ready to let go. "What if I sold the house and gave the   
proceeds to your mom?"   
  
Cheryl's eyes went wide. "You can't do that," she said.  
  
"Why not?"   
  
She seemed appalled, but unable to come up with a good reason.   
"Because you can't. He left that house to you."  
  
"I'll never live in it. I don't have any family who need it.   
Would it help you and Joe to enjoy the time you have with your   
mother, instead of scrambling to make ends meet?"   
  
She appeared torn. He sensed that once her confusion wore off   
she would find his offer difficult to refuse. "Fox, why don't we   
talk about it tomorrow when you're -- when you're feeling   
better." He had thought she was going to say, "When you're   
sane."  
  
She rested her hand on his arm, and for a moment he thought she   
was going to kiss him on the cheek. Instead she looked   
embarrassed, and then hurried from the room.   
  
To Mulder's surprise, cutting the last tie with his childhood   
home was more of a relief than a loss. Whatever griefs and   
struggles he would face in the future, they would at least be   
*different* ones.   
  
Aching with weariness, Mulder got up to turn off the lamp. He   
crept into bed and coaxed Scully into pillowing her head on his   
shoulder. She curled against him like a cat; like a liquid   
filling all the hollows of his body.  
  
"Mulder?" she asked.  
  
"Hmmm," he answered.  
  
"Did you really not see anything out there? Nothing at all?" she   
asked. Mulder had thought she'd been asleep. When he didn't   
answer at once, she disengaged herself and raised up on one   
elbow, as if searching his face for signs of validation, evidence   
that she wasn't crazy.  
  
Mulder didn't have the emotional energy to give her evidence just   
then. He shut his eyes against the image of that long, gray   
shadow, and found it waiting for him behind his eyelids as well.   
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.   
  
She seemed to accept that and settled down against him again.   
"Do you think it was evil? The thing that you saw?"  
  
//Damn.// There was no lying to her. "I don't know. Maybe."  
  
"I don't think Susannah was evil. Just angry and lonely. She   
was willing to do whatever it took to fill that emptiness inside   
her." Scully sighed, and he felt her draw in on herself   
slightly, as if curling around some too-vulnerable place. "I   
guess I understood what that felt like."  
  
Mulder thought of the nights he'd spent staring at flickering   
images on the TV, waiting for dawn to come so he could go to work   
and feel like a real person again. "Me too." She wrapped her   
arm around his chest and hugged him tight.   
  
"Remember when you were talking before -- about children who came   
back to haunt people because no one gave them names?"  
  
It took a moment for his exhausted brain to make the connection.   
All his folklore studies seemed so dim and far away. "Yeah, I   
guess so."  
  
"What happened after someone named them?"  
  
His mind groped through the confused jumble of half-sleep,   
remembering an Oxford don who'd droned on and on about liminal   
rituals and compound beings. "Mostly they disappeared. Never   
heard from again."  
  
She was silent, and at first he thought she had fallen asleep   
again. "I gave them names. Or I gave the baby a name, anyway.   
I gave Susannah her own name again, in case someone hadn't -- I   
mean not officially. Not in a church."  
  
It occurred to him she was speaking of baptism of the dead -- an   
ancient pagan practice long condemned by the Catholic Church.   
He'd been accused of New-Age, anti-Christian sentiment before,   
not least by Scully herself, but he remained carefully neutral   
toward her lapse of orthodoxy. "So what happened?" he asked.  
  
She was quiet a long time, and then said softly, "Nothing.   
Nothing that I could tell."  
  
"Ah." He ran his hand up and down her back, feeling the smooth   
rippling of her spine under his fingers. "Even if you weren't   
able to see a change, it may have meant something to her that you   
tried. Sometimes even the attempt to help means a lot."   
  
She curled tighter against him, as if to seal off the memory of   
her helplessness in the face of the ghost-child's pain. "You did   
all you could -- for Emily. For Susannah." He might easily have   
added, "For Samantha." Letting go and moving on were not lessons   
he was very well qualified to teach.   
  
Scully's silent tears were hot against his chest. Mulder blinked   
back the water in his own eyes, clearing his throat repeatedly.   
One of them had to be the strong one.   
  
"So," he said, his voice not nearly as steady as he would have   
liked it, "When we elope, how about the Grand Canyon for the   
honeymoon?" he said.  
  
"*What?*"   
  
He was pleased at having momentarily startled her out of her   
sorrow. "We could, you know, ride burros and buy carved cedar   
knick-knacks."  
  
"*Mulder,*" she said. The exasperation in her voice was a hint   
of the old Scully, an edge he could work with.  
  
"I'm tired of the past, Scully. It's like a trap that sucks you   
in until you just . . . drown in it. I want to talk about my   
future. With you."  
  
She didn't reply, but she lifted his hand and twined their   
fingers together. He considered her silence as good as   
encouragement. "No burros, huh?" he asked.  
  
"No burros."  
  
"What about Yellowstone?" he asked.  
  
"Paris," she said dreamily.  
  
"But at Yellowstone we could watch the Old Faithful geyser. It   
would be educational," he said.  
  
"I could stuff you *in* the Old Faithful geyser. Think how   
educational that would be."  
  
"You wouldn't really do it," he said.  
  
"Try me."  
  
They spun fantasies for a little while longer, and then fell into   
companionable silence. Mulder found himself lulled by the sound   
of her breathing, and even the fitful gusts of wind outside could   
not dispel the sweet sleepiness coming over him.   
  
Just as he was about to slip into unconsciousness, she asked   
again, "Mulder?"   
  
"What?" he murmured.   
  
"Thank you."  
  
He caressed the small of her back with his thumb. They didn't   
often say they loved one another, just as they rarely displayed   
affection in public. They had other ways to say exactly what   
they meant.  
  
"Anytime," he said.  
  
********  
  
EPILOGUE  
  
Superior Court Building  
Cape Cod, MA  
  
Justice Francis Steeh was not happy about the criminal complaint   
that had landed on his desk that morning. "Why are there two   
autopsy protocols in here?" he asked, rifling through the thick   
stack of forms, diagrams, and reports.  
  
The lead detective on the case, Ron Davis, cleared his throat and   
said, "We were concerned that the initial autopsy, done by an   
acquaintance of the family, might not be as unbiased..."  
  
Steeh glanced at the protocol's header and interrupted him.   
"This wasn't done by some county coroner, detective, this woman   
is an FBI pathologist. If you didn't like her, the time to   
object was before, not after. Why should the taxpayers have to   
pay twice because of some jurisdictional dispute?"  
  
Davis opened his mouth, but the defense lawyer, a chubby media-  
hound named Hubb, cut him off. "Your Honor, we intend to request   
suppression of the second autopsy for precisely that reason -- "  
  
"You can make all the motions to quash you like if this thing   
goes to trial," Steeh interrupted. "Right now I'm not seeing   
any probable cause at all."  
  
The Commonwealth Attorney, a thin, pale man, who looked as if he   
might be suffering from ulcers, spoke up and said, "The defendant   
did score "deceptive" on polygraph questions related to his   
presence on Martha's Vineyard, Your Honor."  
  
"Evidence which you can't bring before a jury, anyway," Steeh   
pointed out. Peering down through his bifocals, he ran his index   
fingers over passages in the two nearly-identical autopsy   
protocols. "Detective Davis, I may be missing something, but the   
only difference I see here is that Dr. Scully says a particular   
wound was 'consistent with a fall on to a sharp object' and Dr.   
Kreger says it's 'consistent with' a stabbing. You had the whole   
autopsy redone for *that?*"   
  
Hubb broke in again. "And that is exactly why the second report   
should be dismissed. My client--"  
  
Davis didn't let him finish. "Your Honor, we have reason to   
believe that John McBer is a danger to the community," he said.  
  
Steeh glanced up at Hubb, who was clearly fuming at not being   
able to run his famous mouth. "Mr. Hubb, where is your client   
right now?" Steeh asked.   
  
"Concord Correctional Institution, Your Honor," he said, looking   
unhappy. From a man like Hubb, brevity spoke volumes.  
  
"For what?" Steeh pressed.  
  
"Alleged murder, but the case has no merit . . ."   
  
Steeh turned to Davis and the Commonwealth Attorney. "I don't   
think you need to worry about John McBer getting out anytime   
soon." The detective's head only got redder. "If you collect   
more evidence on him, bring this back to me, but not until then."  
  
"Thank you Your Honor. You've made the right decision . . ."   
Hubb began.  
  
As the defense counsel continued to babble, a yellow Post-It note   
fell out of the file. "What is this?" Steeh asked. When he   
held the paper close enough to read, the scribble across it   
resolved itself into writing. It said: "Fetch -- 300.19 (?)   
Returns from dead to take living away. Be careful if you call   
for dead friend/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."  
  
"Detective, what is *that?*" Steeh asked, holding the note out   
stuck to one finger. Davis glanced at it and winced.  
  
"Ah -- that's a note from the profiler in the case, Agent Mulder.   
He's a little bit..."  
  
Steeh finished for him. "Preposterous. This entire case file is   
preposterous." He stuck the note back in the file and closed it,   
then pushed away.  
  
"Next case!"  
  
But as the day wore on, Steeh found his thoughts returning to the   
words on the Post-It note. A devout Catholic, he had attended   
Masses for the Dead all his life. Yet it had never occurred to   
him that fervent prayers to raise Mother or Aunt Mildred from   
Purgatory might raise something different, and less human, in   
their place.   
  
After the last defendant of the day shuffled off in chains, Steeh   
descended to the tunnel that connected the court and the county   
lock-up, where active files were stored in a hot little room not   
much bigger than a walk-in closet.  
  
The McBer case lay in the middle of a tall stack marked, "To be   
filed." Feeling slightly foolish, Steeh flipped it open and   
examined the note again: "Be careful if you call for dead   
friends/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."  
  
The longer he thought about such things, the more conscious he   
was of the building emptying out, and of the young woman lying   
dead on Martha's Vineyard, victim of an unknown assailant.  
  
//Old fool. Senile old goat.//   
  
He was a justice of the peace, for heaven's sake, not a credulous   
child. He slapped the McBer file shut and worked it into its   
place between other folders in a tightly-packed metal cabinet.   
The cabinet door banged shut. Steeh shut off the lights and   
locked the file room, then strode away down the hall, his   
footsteps ringing in the empty corridor.  
  
Within a few weeks the unsolved case would be nearly forgotten,   
moved first to the State Police station in Yarmouth, then to a   
central depository in Boston. It would remain there, unsolved,   
unclosed, one yellowing folder among thousands, a nightmare lying   
far back in institutional memory. Gathering dust.   
  
In the dark.  
  
*****  
  
THE END 


End file.
